Q2A is a dead project?

Question

The developer has not responded for a long time. The last release was a year ago. There are no new opportunities. There is no refactoring. What is the future?

Comments

A few corrections:

 1. "last release was a year ago" => That is in accurate. It was on January 30, 2018. Some additional facts, taken from public information in GitHub:
    * Latest code merge was on July 30, 2018
    * Latest pull request was on November 27, 2018 (2 days ago)
 2. "There is no refactoring" => That is false. If you take a look at the dev branch you will realize there is a lot of refactoring going on.

A few clarification requests:

 1. "the developer has not responded" => What have you asked the developer that has not been responded?
 2. "for a long time" => Since when exactly?
 3. "There are no new opportunities" => What is an "opportunity"?

Also, can you provide the source of information to your comments?

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1/2. I compared it to previous years. Here and on github
3. new functionality, features

I understand you want to protect, but the fact is, the project is developing very, very slowly. Yes, the good thing is that there are no errors, but there is nothing new. New,

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I agree that development pace has decreased since Gideon stopped developing and Q2A turned into a community-based maintained project.

Note the project in Github has over 1k stars. It is really surprising how a project with that amount of stars has so few people contributing. Just take a look at this: https://github.com/q2a/question2answer/pulls . If you remove the just-a-few-lines pull requests it would only result in 2 people recently contributing.

But well, that's the the thing with free of charge software: you can take it or leave it. Or even better, you can take it, leave it or improve it (although this option is not quite popular!).

On the good side (and I'm pretty sure you won't agree on this but it is a fact), the core provides support for plugins that can CONSIDERABLY extend the core in MANY ways. So nobody really strongly relies on the core developers to get more features. It is just a matter of developing those plugins. Anyone can do that. All it requires is time to learn and code or money to pay someone to do that. If someone is not willing to spend time or money on something they want, then they don't really want them that much, right? :)

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@pupi1985 it's not just about take it, leave it, improve it or spend on it. It's about lacking a vision for the project from the lead. Even WordPress is free and has been from the start but it only attracted a ton of devs and it still is attracting more and more devs. It's just because they had a vision and they put every ounce of energy into fulfilling that.

On the other hand, Q2A doesn't seem to have any vision. Over the years I have seen you and Scott work on this project and I can vote that you both are amazing devs. You both did a lot to keep this project alive. But the fact is, a project is not called alive by just working on it. Instead by working to bring more people to it or taking the project to the people.

My final words would be, if drastic changes are not made now then Q2A is as alive as a  dead body.

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I'm a developer. I don't have any particular permission on the GitHub's repository, so I'm just another mortal :) I spend around 15 hours a week in Q2A-related activities, including answering questions here, which happens to be the time I have left from my personal life. Considering the lack of development hours that people as a whole spend in Q2A (I can infer this by looking at the pull requests and plugins published here), I'd say any development hour spent is a good investment of time. That's what I can offer: my development time.

I can confirm that testing is needed as well. I know in the past this post was created https://www.question2answer.org/qa/56130 but I think it led to no where, or at least I saw no other update on that.

Those are the things that I see are step 0. Unless those are not satisfied, I hardly believe it is possible to reach step 1.

Now, if your final words are requesting drastic changes, I'm sad to tell you that they don't help at all. You will need to clarify what those changes are (in detail) and how you can contribute for them to actually happen. "Be the change you want to see in the world" :)

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How much money it will take so that your time is not wasted and you could develop the project with Scott I know that you have another job. How can we help? We can collect a donation. How much money is required?

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In my case, all I can give are those hours. I won't have more free time even if I'm paid for that. I mean, I like Q2A but I won't quit my full time job for it :) So I don't ask for any money, although I do believe Scott should receive some donations from time to time.

Furthermore, I believe that any user who actually owns a Q2A site and is making profit out of advertisement (or any other way) should donate something every month/quarter/year. It is one of the ways of giving back. Without Q2A, that income wouldn't have been there in the first place. Maybe donating an X% (up to each site owner) of the income will help keep motivation up.

Anyway, according to Gurjyot, it is not just a matter of developing but also taking other actions. Maybe understanding that other path and turning it into concrete actions could help figure out the best way to invest any money in Q2A.

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I have added an answer instead of a comment, to give some of my thoughts on what can be done to improve Q2A.

Answer 1

Alright here is what I have in mind for Q2A which can help if for sure. I'll divide the situation into parts by which each can be understood and handled separately. 

Problems

1. Lack of vision of Q2A. What is Q2A and why is it here? Is it trying just to become a clone of StackOverflow?
2. Community Members do not believe in the software, they believe in the team. The lack of team activity on the website leads to a sense of doubt in the minds.
3. Currently, we are lacking devs (not core devs) and not many devs are on Q2A because of lack of people using Q2A (and the number of websites using Q2A on homepage, it's just not correct - anyone can see that).
4. Lack of communication from devs to members of Q2A. By this I mean, what's going on in Q2A and what devs are planning next? What's new that's about to happen or what has already happened? Basically, someone with authority to talk to. Because of the lack of communication, the first thing which breaks is, the Community. 
5. Not giving proper exposure to devs and other contributors who spend most of their time in this community. 

Solutions

1. A vision is as important as the destination for a ship in the sea. If there is no defined destination then the ship will keep wandering and will never reach a destination or even close to it. Decide a vision and show it in bold on the homepage which reminds all, what Q2A is about. And that will also help you decide what direction should Q2A take in the next release to keep that vision alive.
2. This is going to take the most time to explain. In a situation like this, you should focus on grabbing a few more hands for Q2A. Make a small team for different work like Community management, Marketing, Development, Github issue management, docs management and anything else which you think is necessary. By team I do not mean that you have to pay them or anything, just give them exposure and a status that they are part of the staff and that will be enough. This can be done by making them mods, editors, contributors and what else you think necessary.
   Now you do not have to make this team in one go. Start by adding one new member who is most active after devs and knows the stuff around Q2A. And then after some time another one when you find someone fitting. Every year a few will leave and a few can be added. This keeps a sense of activeness in the mind of community members that team is alive and active. Which intern encourages them to keep believing in the team. Moreover, a word of encouragement every now and then from the leader that Q2A is here to stay and will stay for many years to come can give much more confidence to the members in believing Q2A. Once they start to believe then this will change into a cycle and Q2A will keep going forward much faster.
3. This problem somehow relates to point 2 only. Once people will have trust in the team and Q2A, they'll start coming more and will also bring more people on it. Now with more people in the community will attract more devs towards this community. But that's not where it ends. You also need to help and encourage these devs to stick to the community, which can be done by the Community Manager. Give these devs proper exposure and show trust in their work. Give them proper credit for their work and this all can be done by the Community manager (rarely any devs input is necessary here).
4. Here Community Manager plays a vital role. If you see Scott's activity on this website then it's 5 hours back, Sept 30 and July 27, then how can you make a new visitor believe that the project is alive when the leader is not showing here for months. During this time, having a proper communication system is much more important. I would suggest having a Discord channel for Q2A where members can talk to each other and to other devs much more easily and fast. Moreover, it can be left in the hands of community manager only. He should also be able to make Community update posts which can be pinned at top every month. This gives any member a sense of stability that whatever is happening in the community, he is getting to know about it all. 
   This managers main duty would be to take care of the community, take care of spam, to clear any doubts in the minds of members, to report to devs about any major concerns or activity in the community every day or week. Once the manager feels that the community is getting bigger then he can have more help by adding one or two members under him and creating a separate Communication Team. 
5. Finally, I have seen for many years a lot of devs came to Q2A but none got supported by Q2A even a bit. Now I do not say to give them money or anything, but give them status as contributors or editors if they are doing well in the community. Even Pupi worked for years then he got a status of a moderator. If you do not encourage devs then how would they find the motivation to stick in Q2A. If devs perform well then give them a higher rank and if they stop performing for a long long time (and do not respond) then decrease their rank. 

Few other things to add here are, shift the home website to WordPress with a free but decent theme. Right now it's like making a Mercedes in shadow of a broken shed. Make someone handle the social media channels of Q2A. Scott said that he'll post on these frequently but nothing has been posted on them for montttttttths. 

There are many more things but the fact is, will anyone be able to implement these?

Comments

Actually, you need it the most. Nowadays you are around so you can take care of things here but when you are not here for months, who takes care of the community? These experts and editors will keep the motivation level high of these members. Moreover, by making anyone an editor does not mean he cannot help in development.

In simple terms, you need extra hands at development but don't know how to get those. In real world, a company pays and people work for that company. But in an open source script most people work for recognition and exposure. They do not need money, they just need exposure from this project. Now all you have to do is, encourage them, make best members into speical members, tell about these members to the community with an announcement. Show names of these members in a Team page listed on home website and tag them in social media posts. Basically, you need to give them incentives in an open source way.

Now what this results is in, more dedicated members who are ready to invest more time in Q2A. With more such special members comes more registered members who get better help in Q2A and also want to becomes like these special members. So they also start to invest more time here. With more members in Q2A, also comes third part devs (which are running away from Q2A right now) who see an opportunity to shine in this community.

If you don't think there is any need, then create that need by expanding work or roadmap. And then assigning that extra work to these new special members. That's how a project goes.

There are always people who work out of love for a project but more that 90% are there to find an opportunity. Give them some and take some out. ;)

Edit: As for the docs are concerned, you never asked anyone in the community to update those? Or asked what exactly they need in those docs which need to be updated. The more you get involved into community, the more the community get involved in you.

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@Scott I feel better create custom title plugin so that you can assign those to various people and form a official team. Titles like Q2A Support team, Q2A Test Team, dev team, doc team, social media team etc.

so when people get reply for their question they will know that there is official support. This will help to build confidence in Q2A.

Regarding v1.8.1 release:  We know it is not actual malware but many security software block q2a sites. Hope we dont want our user to face that problem.

Also I'm not asking you to work full time but come up with roadmap, tasks, form a team which will work on those. You just need to take a lead on this.

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@Gurjyot actually I did ask about documentation, here: http://www.question2answer.org/qa/50709/new-q2a-documentation-site
I didn't have anything specific in mind but many people asked for this kind of thing in past (hence why the wiki was originally made).

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That's great. Now you can Pin that post at the top of this forum and let more and more people know about it. The more people know the better as a few among them might start to help you in managing those docs. Also share that post on social media with proper hashtags to bring make some noise for Q2A and bring some more members to it.

Answer 2

Q2A has such a nice core that not much activity is required on it. But Q2A plugins and themes require periodic maintenance and new features. As of now there aren't many developers doing this due to various reasons. The primary reason I feel is that as an organization it is difficult to use any software where they don't have trust and for this reason many are not using Q2A -- this in turn means good developers dont use Q2A too as they have less customers. So for Q2A we need to build the trust that it'll be active and developers are available for any feature request. From my part I'll try to add some plugins to do the following:

1. Stop Spam
2. HTML Emails

Once Q2A becomes 'ready to use' for any organization I feel there will be a lot of customers. We also need to 

1. Rate the devlopers here especially for paid plugins -- some of the paid plugins are horrible
2. As of now Paid plugins are not listed anywhere AFAIK - so no one knows which all are available
3. Have a proper way to "Donate to Core Developers:" This also build trust for any organization to use Q2A and also the core developers to get fund. 

Comments

Rating developers is not what I would suggest, people should be able to see those devs in action in the community. The more a dev is active in the community the more the trust people will have on him, that's how it should be.
Your other two points are absolutely correct.

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@arjunsuresh, true, we need to build trust for this platform otherwise it will not grow.

anyway, I still test every new version of Q2A thoroughly.

Answer 3

I think there should be ads on this page which should be clicked once per user.

Comments

What do you mean by this? Do you just mean having something like Google Adsense?

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I think this is a good idea.  This could create some revenue and support the project.

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I agree with you.

Answer 4

Hello, Q2A is still active. As you can see in the github there are still pull requests coming in, but I personally haven’t had the time to merge all those in. Coincidentally I just started going through them before you posted.

I won’t make excuses for my lack of updates, especially the past couple months. Though prior to that I had been working on several things behind the scenes including taking over control of the Q2A site so that I can do releases myself without having to wait for Gideon.

My paid work has quietened down a bit now so hopefully I’ll have more time for development and managing the project.

And remember, be the change you want to see. If you want more activity in Q2A then become more active yourself, whether it’s answering the many unanswered here, improving the docs, making plugins or contributing to Q2A core.

Comments

Thanks Scott

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@scott, please update this q2a to latest version and install SSL.