OpenSourceCommunity.org Alternatives?
I was a huge fan of Amy Stephen's Open Source Community. The site's mission was built on a desire to be a "place for those of us interested in open source solutions and community issues". OSC shared a similar goal of mine in which I have a strong desire to bring people together from competing Web CMS projects, products, and organizations and compare perspectives (though I have interest in propriety systems as well as open source). Unfortunately OSC went offline last April with only a promise to be back up sometime in the future.
I will be taking the site down sometime tomorrow evening and will likely be down for awhile. It could be a week - maybe two, but one day, it'll be back! Thanks!
Recent discussion here at CMSReport.com brought the whereabouts of OSC back into question. I personally don't know when OSC will ever be back online. However, I think perhaps the better question might be, if you liked OSC.org what other sites should be considered? That is a very hard question to answer.
I've recently started taking a look at Ostatic. I'm not convinced it is the best replacement for OSC, but for me it is a start. So I ask my gentle readers, What Internet forum would you recommend that can be a place for those interested in open source solutions and community issues?
Please feel free to leave your recommendations for OSC alternatives via the comment form.
Replacement for opensourcecommunity . org
Bryan, Why don't you consider starting one yourself? I would even start one on my own site if anyone was interested in committing to help. I'd simply install a WordPress blog and let 'er rip. The issue is getting people to participate. You need a dedicated group of people willing to share the load. Running a busy site on your own is a lot of work. JoeJoomla
The issue is getting people
Yes, getting people to share the load is an issue. That's why OpenSourceCommunity.org was "special" and perhaps it helps shows Amy's talents of getting people together (most of the time). She did work her butt off.
Personally, I and I think others are hesitant to be a part of something like OSC. I respect Amy's wish to move on, but I sure wish the content of the site could have been handed off. There were some good discussions and reviews on that site that died with OSC. Very hard to reference content that is no longer online (unless it made it to archive.org).
It's out there
It is indeed all out there at archive.org. Weekly snapshots covering the period February 13, 2008 through April 6, 2008.
I had a bunch of dumps of the database on my local drive for a long time, but I deleted them a month or so ago during one of my infrequent, but badly needed disk storage cleanup exercises.
Thanks Harry. To be honest I
Thanks Harry. To be honest I hadn't yet checked archive.org.
So would ever do an OSC site again. I know you had quite a bit of your own content over there?
Probably not
I dont think so. Although I submitted occasional articles, it was Amy who ended up doing the vast majority of the posts. I don't have any real statistics but I would guess that Amy produced a good 85 to 90 percent of the articles.
OSC had no problems attracting members but most of them were content to leave comments rather than contribute articles. Which is, I guess not all that uncommon for many community sites.
But it was fun for a while and I learned a lot about Drupal. So much in fact that I now use it for my personal web site.