I'm glad
someone brought up the elephant in the room... and for me that elephant has been the legitimacy of the slogan we have here, "The Largest Java Community". My question is simple and for the owner(s) of our forum or for anyone that can provide the answer(other members with opinions please provide your input too!)- can you provide proof of this statistical claim? If it exists, I'd be really interested in seeing it and further promoting it.
If it doesn't exist, then I think we need to take a look at the possibility of changing the slogan to something more accurate. Other well known forums for example, like the Sun Forums have a very large community. Another one devoted solely to Java(like here) is very big too and I'm choosing not to name it because it gets enough attention already- their user interface is horrible. Another popular forum doesn't devote itself to only Java, but to the whole software development community and has over 300,000 members with over 69,000 of them being active members-- what are the chances there is a great number of that active member number that is devoted to their Java sub-community? Pretty good I would say.
The place with the horrible UI that I describe above claims itself on being a "friendly" place for Java developers. But forums like Sun and the massive one I mentioned above simply state that they are mere
Discussion Community's. I feel that this strengthens their image, and a strengthening of an image only serves to help. If they had claimed to be something and it was found out that they are not what they claimed to be- they would lose credibility and members might stop visiting.
I love this place. But in a logical sense, we have over 4,000 members with just over 600 of them being active.... unfortunately, these are small numbers in comparison with the other forums I talked about. With that said, is the slogan "The Largest Java Community" accurate?
What about something like:
Java Forums; The Friendliest Java Community
Java Forums; A Java Developer Community
Java Forums; Java Developer Community
Java Forums; A Java Development Community
Java Forums; A Community for Java Developers
or something to these effects. I think this is something worth considering and can only serve to the betterment of the community.
I look forward to your thoughts on this subject.
-Capt