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Overview#
This page contains a summary of the discussion which occurred under the "Open Discussion - How to increasing JSPWiki publicity" thread on the JSPWiki mailing lists. This may help to focus our publicity efforts as (temporarily) documented at Scratchpad - increasing JSPWiki publicity.
The initial post (by Siegfried Goeschl) was made on the developers list hereContent unavailable! (broken link)https://jspwiki-wiki.apache.org/images/out.png, summarised below:
"Hi folks,
The question at hand is to increase JSPWiki’s publicity - how can we do that? Unfortunately Open Source also consists of advertising otherwise no user will ever use it :-)
- the presentation at ApacheCon 2014 was a start
- I also presented JSPWiki at my local Java User Group
- very likely I will do another presentation at the Linux Days in Vienna
but this only reaches very few people :-(
So what can we do to get more users?
- Anyone in the mood to write an article and try to publish it?
- Are there any conferences were JSPWiki can be easily presented?
- Any brilliant ideas?
Thanks in advanceSiegfried Goeschl"
The ensuing discussion occurred over April 2014Content unavailable! (broken link)https://jspwiki-wiki.apache.org/images/out.png, May 2014Content unavailable! (broken link)https://jspwiki-wiki.apache.org/images/out.png, November 2015Content unavailable! (broken link)https://jspwiki-wiki.apache.org/images/out.png, and February 2016Content unavailable! (broken link)https://jspwiki-wiki.apache.org/images/out.png. Following is a selection of thread responses.
"One easy way to raise JSPWiki's profile is to provide a page showing all the external sites using it. I created this for Apache Roller: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/WhoUsesRollerContent unavailable! (broken link)https://jspwiki-wiki.apache.org/images/out.png. To find out Roller bloggers, I googled a text string that is usually present on Roller's login page ("powered by apache roller weblogger version ..."). If JSPWiki could place a similar, non-obtrusive string on its login page (or actually anywhere, doesn't matter) googling on a monthly basis should see an increasing number of Wikis that could be added to a "WhoUsesJSPWiki" page. Seeing all the impressive ways JSPWiki is being used is a ton of easy advertising all by itself."
"Really ramping up activity on social networks would be a good idea, Facebook and Twitter specifically. There is a Facebook page with a whopping four members, and activity on there is all but dead. Happy to make a time commitment here to start posting fresh content."
Note that there was disagreement over maintaining the social network (hereContent unavailable! (broken link)https://jspwiki-wiki.apache.org/images/out.png, hereContent unavailable! (broken link)https://jspwiki-wiki.apache.org/images/out.png, and hereContent unavailable! (broken link)https://jspwiki-wiki.apache.org/images/out.png). I managed to complete miss this messages at the time, so I'll raise this again on the dev list to confirm we are in agreement (or not).
If the question is how "to increase JSPWiki’s publicity - how can we do that? Unfortunately Open Source also consists of advertising otherwise no user will ever use it"), then social networks are a key part of the answer. The process I would recommend is to publish first and foremost on the official JSPWiki blog or the official wiki, then duplicate this content to social networks. The resulting administrative burden for social networks is absolutely minimal, and, we retain control of our content.
For better or worse (vis a vis the open web) there are large numbers of folks for whom content pushed via social networks is going to be the first or primary method by which they receive news – rather than actively browsing to a website or mailing list – so it makes little sense to close off this potentially fruitful method of getting our message out. The argument that they should be closed by virtue of there being so little actively is also moot given that the same could be said for the public-facing aspect of the project in general. There has to be fresh content, news, and activity to build on to begin with (e.g. the new Haddock template).
It may also help with efforts to establish notability for Wikipedia, for instance.
"I think that one of the initial points people should address, prior to launching a publicity campaign, is: who is JSPWiki for? It's pretty important to identify the market segment that efforts will then be made towards. We could all just talk about it a lot, but it's more efficient if someone actually has an idea as to what is to be achieved, for whom."
An excellent point, and one that needs documenting in further detail. There is likely existing material which could inform this, e.g. http://jspwiki.apache.org/Content unavailable! (broken link)https://jspwiki-wiki.apache.org/images/out.png and http://www.ecyrd.com/JSPWiki/wiki/JSPWikiFeaturesContent unavailable! (broken link)https://jspwiki-wiki.apache.org/images/out.png.