StackOverflow Open Source Ad

Hi all,

Stack Overflow runs free advertising for open-source projects, to attract contributors to a project.

These run in 6 month blocks, a new one is due to start any day now.

I submitted an advert 6 months ago (on my own initiative, i.e. it is better to ask forgiveness than permission). It is fairly simple (minimalist :-D), just a composition of the logo with a github logo and the text. I think it took me an hour or so.

It is infact the most successful opensource project advert of the period.
Getting 17.46 clicks per day for a total of 3,318.
Beating Atomā€™s 16.02 clicks per day (3,059 total).

I think getting ~3,300 people more aware of julia, was a worth-while thing to do.

Since it is going to expire, we need a new ad (if we want to continue).
I donā€™t really want to be the person to create it again.
One of the rules of SOā€™s adverts is that you canā€™t repost past adverts.
So a new one needs to be created.
Some else should do that.

I unfortunately, do not have access to the raw illustrator files I used to create it, due to the computer being a bit dead (and me procrastinating on repairing it).
But it is not like it was complex.

The only suggestion I have is that it might be worth considering how to draw contributors to the ecosystem as a whole (esp packages), rather than to the language/Base.

I suggest someone should just do one.
And not over think it.
And not bikeshed over it here.

14 Likes

Good stuff. I used to do community ads for Mathematicaā€™s stack exchange. Looks like the resolution has increased since thenā€¦

The main thing is I think to get people to upvote them so that they get included? Or has that changed?

The main thing is I think to get people to upvote them so that they get included?

It only needs 6 upvotes to be included.
We got that in <12 hours (iirc).
It will get it trivially, unless it is aweful

I like it, but I think it would be even better to catch that feeling without implicitly criticizing other programming languages. What about ā€œIntuitive. Fast. Open. Join the revolutionā€ or something like that. (EDIT happy to set up the text and image if you like it).

12 Likes

13 Likes

implicit? (Thatā€™s why I put it here, not on stackoverflow).

1 Like

Right :smiley: I think @felix should just post one of his :slight_smile:

1 Like

:slight_smile: will do, let the # of hearts decide

Comic Sans? Doge meme? Thatā€™s two downvotes alreadyā€¦ :slight_smile:

1 Like

What page should it link to?

Linking to github is better than linking to the julialang.org frontpage.
(That would be probably disallowed as soliciting contrinutor).

Better would be to link to a page that welcomes new comers.
Suggests how to find packages they would like to contibute to etc.

2 Likes

Good point. The expectation is to link to github. But to me that would be intimidating / itā€™s hard for new users to find a direction. I guess what would be good would be to have a short page in three parts:

  1. sell how great Julia is (make up for details missing from the advert)
  2. indicate the overall direction of the project
  3. give specific points that could do with contributions

I wrote something like this here:
https://github.com/felixrehren/julialang.github.com/blob/fr-start/start.md
(@ChrisRackauckas I mentioned DiffEq.jl because of your great blog post, hope thatā€™s ok :slight_smile: )

Could something like this be useful?
(Does Julia have a public strategy/direction/goals for 1.0, or should that section in the draft be taken out?)

2 Likes

Looks great.
only big change I would make would be to remove the big plot of benchmarks.
just saying julia is fast, and linking to the benchmarks page will do,
and it means we spend less space boasting about julia and more time telling people how they can contribute

1 Like

Hereā€™s my suggestion for the adā€¦

Code is here; feel free to bike-shed to your heartā€™s content!

17 Likes

I really like it, though I slightly prefered my own motto (ā€˜intuitive, fast and openā€™) :slight_smile: Otherwise I think this is the best so far :smiley:

1 Like

I think that ā€œmodernā€ is more objective than ā€œintuitiveā€ :wink:

I second that!

2 Likes

@cormullion
I love that that is a julia advert coded in julia.

4 Likes

Weā€™re fortunate in that regard, compared with an ad for, say, a Markdown editorā€¦ :slight_smile:

What does modern mean here? Perhaps we can think of something that is a bit more special to julia?