On Tue, 13 Jan 2004, bulia byak wrote:
The metric I'm watching for this is the size of the inkscape-devel mailing list; when it hits 200-300 I will assume we're at the sweet spot. Based on the volume of list traffic I think we're already pretty close. :-)
I can understand the 200-300 as the ideal size of the developer community, but users? They don't have to be a community at all, and any attempts to limit their number seem utterly weird to me. I am not very excited to think that my work will be used by no more than 300 people in the whole world.
I did not say 200-300 users, but rather 200-300 people who would be interested and brave enough to join a *-devel list. I would assume the actual userbase size would be much larger.
Also, I don't think we would try to do anything to actively _limit_ growth, just use that number as a target. If we exceeded that limit, the logical step would be to consider budding off a new mailing list (e.g., perhaps inkscape-users or something).
I do think there's value to having a user community eventually. Users can sometimes be much more effective at helping each other with basic usage problems and sharing tricks & tips, etc.
Bryce