Lambda the Ultimate

A sense of community
started 3/15/2002; 1:48:35 PM - last post 3/19/2002; 11:45:05 AM

Ehud Lamm - A sense of community

3/15/2002; 1:48:35 PM (reads: 1677, responses: 6)

A sense of community

LtU was concieved as community website, open to anyone interested in programming languages. I wanted to hear what others are interested in, and provide a place for the variety of opinions and points of view. All that while retaining a high signal to noise ratio.

In my mind this site has never been my site. It belongs to the community. Many of the more interesting dicussions started with contributions by others.

Recently, with the advent of many low cost blogging tools, many people interested in programming languages started their own weblogs. Some of the more informed and interesting recent dicussions appeared on these sites. Suddenly instead of experiencing a community weblog, I found myself reading and enjoying a community of weblogs. Does this mean a community site like LtU has no place?

I have given this some thought and I don't think this is the right conclusion. There are many reasons why a community site is different than a set of linked personal sites. It is great that people run their own sites, it is also great to have 'hub' sites like LtU. It is great when people like Patrick Logan and Peter Drayton come here to comment, and link to more detailed discussions they post on their personal sites. Please continue doing so. I use an RSS feed aggregator, but having a central site is useful, esp. when you want threaded discussions. Indeed, scanning many sites for posts on specific subjects (like programming languages) is less appealing than checking a semi-moderated site like LtU.

Let me know about more weblogs that should be added to the list. Let's bootstrap the community. When you link to LtU, please use the site's name instead of Ehud Lamm etc. You are as much a part of this site as I am. Become contributing editors!

I believe that LtU should retain its pretty unusal flavor, mixing theory with insightful analysis of industrial state of the art. It is great that so much of this high quality content is now available through personal weblogs.

Posted to admin by Ehud Lamm on 3/15/02; 2:57:49 PM

Ehud Lamm - Re: A sense of community

3/16/2002; 1:04:20 PM (reads: 1288, responses: 0)

Peter thinks part of the job of a site like LtU is to provide useful metadata. This can mean different things to different people.

Manually categorizing stuff is hard, and these days using Google is usually a better alternative. We attempt to provide a bit of categorization using departments. When looking for old entries I sometime find this feature useful, but I am sad to report that too many posts still go to the general department.

An important feature of sites like LtU is that the information is moderated by a community of peers.

Luke Gorrie - Re: A sense of community

3/17/2002; 4:20:15 PM (reads: 1248, responses: 1)

LTU's great :-)

Ehud Lamm - Re: A sense of community

3/18/2002; 12:06:04 AM (reads: 1325, responses: 0)

Thanks. But too little Erlang, don't you think? :-)

Noel Welsh - Re: A sense of community

3/18/2002; 4:19:29 AM (reads: 1256, responses: 1)

LtU is a great site and it has a nice balance between theory and practice. Most of the discussion centres around stuff most everyone has experienced (e.g. commenting, teaching languages, web services) or winding up Frank ;-) This is natural but doesn't diminsh the value of the unusual stuff. For example, I'm extremely interested in the PBE posts, being an AI kinda dude, but don't have much to comment as that area is quite new to me. In fact I think the stuff that is new to me is more value because of its novelty! I just wish I had more time to read it all. I don't see this diversity on other weblogs.

In short I don't take the lack of discussion as disinterest. As for postings, I believe the number of contributing editors has increased recently.

Ehud Lamm - Re: A sense of community

3/18/2002; 4:37:44 AM (reads: 1334, responses: 0)

me. In fact I think the stuff that is new to me is more value because of its novelty!

Right! That's why I prefer posts from others to my own. Mine don't really surprise me all that much (unless Frank steps in )

Alex Moffat - Re: A sense of community

3/19/2002; 11:45:05 AM (reads: 1227, responses: 0)

While individual weblogs are good for looking at what an individual has to say the advantage of LtU is the amalgamation of many interesting items and the discussions that take place. Few weblogs have any discussion or comments, perhaps because when someone has something to say they tend to post it on their own blog and then link to the original. Hence from the original you can't see the comments. An actual use for bidirectional links perhaps :)