Bad publicity on the front page (from developer's point of view)

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Guntha
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Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2020 11:54 am

Bad publicity on the front page (from developer's point of view)

Post by Guntha »

Hello,

I was considering getting ReactOS some visibility in some developer communities, but I found some bullet points, right on the front page, that are very likely to turn them off:

[ external image ]

First, today I don't know any developer who believes bragging about having a lot of lines of code in their project is a good thing, or that having a growing number of lines of code is a good way to show the project's progress; even though we know that, because we have to add a number of missing features, that number will go up anyway. But having this "And growing!" statement on the front page implies that developers working on this project agree that big LOC-counts are always a good thing, and a lot of good developers don't agree with this. I was about to send a link to this website to some people to get some awareness on the project, but I'm scared they might be instantly turned off by this one point x) (I know I was worried the first time I saw this.)

I also have mixed feeling about the "100+ devs have contributed along the years", implying that a lot or people have boarded the project and then left for some reason, which might scare developers even more (why do so many people leave? Is the project badly managed? Is the working atmosphere on the project toxic? Or is it just, as I believe, a lack of money to keep developers able to work on the project for a long time?). It would not be surprising to have hundreds of people working on an OS, but I don't think highlighting the project's turnover like this is a good thing.

I would love to hear your opinion about this, either if you don't agree with the points I made or if you think other things could be changed to attract more developers :)
karlexceed
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Re: Bad publicity on the front page (from developer's point of view)

Post by karlexceed »

I'm personally not concerned about the information itself, but I wouldn't exactly call them ReactOS's features either.

That said, I know it's unlikely to change anything on the current iteration of the website. There's a new version that's been in the works for a while that will hopefully be rolled out sooner rather than later.
hbelusca
Developer
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Location: Zagreb, Croatia

Re: Bad publicity on the front page (from developer's point of view)

Post by hbelusca »

That's another example of "too much emphasized PR kills everything" that we don't particularly like.
For example for the number of devs you had to read the small line "accumulated over the years", and you also need to know for how long the project exists (since 1999). Somebody who reads that quickly (for example myself who first said that the PR was "dishonest") would though there are like 100+ devs currently active with commit access, which is definitively not the case (less than 10 with current commit access currently active, all the other contributors send patches, and that always was the case thorough the years...).
Guntha
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2020 11:54 am

Re: Bad publicity on the front page (from developer's point of view)

Post by Guntha »

Hello,

I'm sorry for missing that, I wasn't aware a completely new version of the website was in the works, I glanced at it and the first thing the eye is attracted to is the text that quickly describes the mission of ReactOS and how it can be valuable from an user's point of view, which is very good. Actually it's pretty much the same paragraph as the one at the top of the current front page, but curiously my eyes are more attracted to the bullet-points below. I guess grey text on white background doesn't help.

Also the new web pages seem slightly faster to load and their sources less bloated than the current website, which is always a good thing when you want to attract low level developers :)
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