Discussion:
Qi lisp website needs attention
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Xah Lee
2011-06-17 15:15:44 UTC
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was just putting my rant on my website, here:

〈Programing Language: The Glory of Lisp's cons〉
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/lisp_cons.html

in the process, i made a link to the logo for Qi lisp the language.

〈Qi Language Logo〉
http://xahlee.org/emacs/qi_logo.html

and tried to revisit Qi's home page.

Mark Tarver, a great computer scientist, is really a lousy marketer.
Of the few annoucement he made here (comp.lang.lisp) about his
project, often, the links are broken, or the video file not playbale,
etc. While i was visiting Qi's home page today, here:
http://www.lambdassociates.org/
first thing is that the “The Shen Project” link is a broken link
〔 http://www.lambdassociates.org/Shen/index.htm 〕. C'mon, that's first
link on the home page.

also, if you google “qilang”, you get this page at Google:
http://code.google.com/p/qilang/
that's a project with dead activity! No explanation on current status
neither.

Another top link is https://www.ohloh.net/p/qilang
also, it's not clear it's a mirror, or abandoned site, or whatnot.

The rest links on the result page is unrelated.

The Qi home page of lambdassociates.org is not on the first page of
search results!

i understand that we are all busy, and sometimes a few broken link or
page with outdated info are inevitable, but this is just too much.

(if you Google “qi lang” (2 separate words), the result is worse. The
first page has nothing related to computer, except 1 old blog i wrote
about qi.)

compare another new lisp derivative lang the successful Clojure's
website http://clojure.org/
You can see the huge difference.

It's not about marketing per se, but a minimum caretaking of
presentation.

Qi really should have a dedicated domain name. qi, qilang, sheng (.org
or .com). A dedicated domain is just $10 bucks a year. Web hosting is
about $5 a month. So that couldn't be much. The site design is really
bad too. it's like 1990s personal home page, which it really actually
is. Am curious at the moment, so i took a look at the source code:
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage Express 2.0">
LOL! That's a laymen's product for writing html, and has been obsolete
for like, 10 years?

PS am more than happy to be a webmaster of whatever help i can do. At
least fix up broken links. There are lots tools to check for dead
links ... and lots of SEO stuff one can easily do. At least you want
the page to come up when people search for Qi, qilang, or “qi lang”

For those curious, Dr Mark Tarver has here a page describing Sheng the
language:
http://www.lambdassociates.org/Shen/newappeal.htm
if you are a programer with a day job, a small donation i think is
proper.

Xah
Nicolas Neuss
2011-06-21 08:58:59 UTC
Permalink
Post by Xah Lee
Qi really should have a dedicated domain name. qi, qilang, sheng (.org
or .com).
qi.org or shen.org are taken. And a dedicated domain name is overkill
and wasted money for small projects.
Post by Xah Lee
A dedicated domain is just $10 bucks a year. Web hosting is about $5 a
month. So that couldn't be much. The site design is really bad
too. it's like 1990s personal home page, which it really actually
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage Express 2.0"> LOL!
That's a laymen's product for writing html, and has been obsolete for
like, 10 years?
PS am more than happy to be a webmaster of whatever help i can do. At
least fix up broken links. There are lots tools to check for dead
links ... and lots of SEO stuff one can easily do. At least you want
the page to come up when people search for Qi, qilang, or “qi lang”
Maybe that would not be a bad idea. Why don't you ask Mark per Email,
if there is a possibility for you to help administrating the website?
Post by Xah Lee
For those curious, Dr Mark Tarver has here a page describing Sheng the
language: http://www.lambdassociates.org/Shen/newappeal.htm if you are
a programer with a day job, a small donation i think is proper.
Nicolas
jvt
2011-06-22 14:21:56 UTC
Permalink
Last time I tried to contact Mark via the email on lambda associates,
it bounced. Maybe the lisp Bodhisattva has finally gone full Buddha?

-V

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