Posted by Steve on Fri 9 Dec 2005 at 15:07
Over the past few months several new Debian-based community websites have sprung up, providing summaries of news or new articles and tutorials for their visitors. Are we seeing a healthy growth of new Debian sites, or a splintering into redundant factions?
The new sites that I've been reading and following include:
This site has been running for a few months and provides summaries of news relating to Debian GNU/Linux, and derived distributions.
It is updated regularly and often links here, so I like it ;)
DebCentral is a relatively new site with a clean attractive layout and featuring links to interesting off-site stories.
A nice feature of the website is a vibrant and active collection of forums.
Although the name is confusingly similar to both Planet Debian (the weblog aggregation site) and Debian Planet (the existing site which has been running for many years) this site is another newcomer.
So far there have been several interesting news postings containing links to stories of interest to Debian GNU/Linux users.
As you can see there are several interesting new sites which, all "competing" for a share of attention from the Debian userbase.
If you haven't visited any of the sites you've most likely missed out on several interesting pieces, such as these recent examples:
The question of whether there are too many distinct websites competing for a relatively small number of readers has been raised recently, with several of the sites considering ways they could collaborate to complement each other and help the Debian userbase. Discussion articles have been posted at Debian-news and also at DebCentral for example.
I asked Christian of Debian-News and Josh of DebCentral a couple of questions to see how they currently consider their positions.
Josh suggests that DebCentral is currently home to a widely mixed collection of readers, from people beginning to use Debian (and Debian-derived distributions) right the way through to experienced users. The challenge the site faces is to support all the Debian distributions, no mean feat when you realise exactly how many such distributions exist!
Christian from Debian-News has a very focused idea of the role of his site, something that is obvious from the title: Simply provide the best collection of news to all visitors. This is a worthy goal, and a useful service which is much less ambitious than the goal of Josh.
So what do you think of the sites listed, and others? Is there room for all of them to coexist, or would you like to see some more centralisation? Have you ever wanted to help out and join part of a community?
There is something to be said for letting things stay as they are and seeing who keeps motivated and which site attracts the enough attention to keep going, but that isn't the way communities should be run. I'd be curious to hear how visitors see the changing face of the Debian landscape.
(Comments on this site are, of course, always welcome. Either posted here or mailed directly to me)
Which sites, if any, do you visit for Debian news? Or for problem solving?
Whatever happens I have a great deal of respect for anybody who manages to create and maintain a community based website. It is a lot more work than you realise before you try doing it yourself!
PS. This website is now officially over a year old, so thanks to every single visitor who has made a contribution and made running it such an interesting and worthwhile experience
This article can be found online at the Debian Administration website at the following bookmarkable URL:
This article is copyright 2005 Steve - please ask for permission to republish or translate.