[Owasp-leaders] "Is it me or has the OWASP website just fallen into disarray?"

Sun Mar 10 19:30:00 UTC 2013

On 10 Mar 2013, at 19:09, Jim Manico wrote:

> Simon,
>
> I think this is a very fair comment from the community.

It depends Jim. Clearly wiki is the lowest barrier of entry to 
contribution, and is the leading tool for knowledge management. However, 
as you are well aware - the OWASP community is not just the contributors 
it is also the consumers. And the consumers want a CMS; because that is 
a better tool for consumption.

So we actually have a dilemma, based on the perspective of the different 
needs and requirements of two different communities; one of the consumer 
and the other of the content creators.

Now the other dilemma is that of the 1-9-90 rule of social media; and 
OWASP is deeply effected by it. Which is to say:

1% Leaders & Visionaries
9% Creators & Contributors
90% Consumers

We have estimated around 32k? people in the community at large; and yet 
we have only 200 (set 320) active visionaries; and I would also guess 
that we have nothing close to 3200 contributors. Which is to say that we 
have very real problems with barriers to participation; because even the 
math says that we should be doing better on average.

> I feel we need (this is just my opinion as a volunteer) two major 
> initiatives:
>
> 1) A new homepage

I don't disagree with those goals, but see my comments above - I imagine 
this stuff solves itself in short order if we can solve the root issues 
that prevent people from just doing what they obviously want to do so 
much that they complain about not being able to do it. ;-)

> 2) A major cleanup of the wiki; primarily deprecating old content, 
> secondary a little reorganization.

A great example supporting my beliefs is the major clean up of the 
projects area of the wiki. This was done by a single person; who had 
*zero* experience with wiki technology before they started reorganising 
the OWASP projects page.

What are your thoughts?

Dennis

-- 
[Dennis Groves](http://about.me/dennis.groves), MSc
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