Dear All,
I think that GIBA's suggestion is really valuable.
Although I am the first one who defends the "core business" of WCG - i.e. Research - I think that we cannot ignore some marketing issues.
Enrolling new members, motivating people to provide regular and constant contribution, improving the reputation of WCG are also important tasks.
I agree that it is necessary to find a balance between "functional" requirements and "marketing" requirements. Nevertheless communication and attractiveness are important if we expect to fetch new members and to retain existing members.
In the past, I bitched a little bit about reporting functionality (xml, date format, etc.). At this time, my objective was to be able to provide "nice" graphical representation about team progress, contribution to projects, performance, etc.
I can imagine that I am not alone following such objectives. Discouraging volunteers is not the good way for keeping motivation at a high level. I am strongly engaged in various associations (not-for-profit organizations), I have to notice how volunteers could become demotivated by inappropriate communication and "bullish" listening (in fact : no listening).
Developing WCG in the future in a sustainable way requires a strong ability to listen to the volunteers. Listening does not imply that every request must be implemented. However listening can help to increase volunteer's satisfaction and motivation.

At this place, I would like to make a proposal !
Would be possible to have a team responsible for gathering and compiling volunteer's feedback, suggestion, and proposal ?
In order to preserve resource as well as the time of the technical staff and CA, some volunteers could become members of this team who would report the collected information in a structured manner to WCG management. In such a case, some working rules should be defined in order to structure and to formalize the collaboration between the "think tank management team" and the "WCG management board".

I agree that active forum members are not directly representative of all WCG volunteers. However active forum members are the active, proactive, as well as innovative part of WCG daily life. Everybody can take part of the forum life; indeed only some "fews" are using this opportunity to earn information and to provide some feedbacks. I do not see any reasons to ignore such feedbacks because they represent "only" few percent (permil ?) of the total of volunteers.

Have a nice week !
Yves

you brought up some intresting ideas

personaly i like seein an active comunity and active projects

remember one thing about these projects is untill everything is ready to go and all the leagle paperwork is taken care of and such ... releasing what is comming up may not be a good idea

the system seems to work well for me and most people on the forms at least knew about the CEP and the new work units within a day or 2...

as for the people who dont check the site as often as some of us well hopefully they will have themselves spread about a bunch of jobs cause alot of us badge hunters will be shifting to a limited number of jobs to get our badges

feedback is always important though and i love hearing from the scientists