Philz,
No, I was not implying that you or anyone else would like to "steal" the whole site. However, I am, at times, a minimalist who likes to operate under the idea of "if it isn't broke, don't fix it". Your suggestion as I understood was to move from wikidot, and I really don't see the practicality of doing so. While a wiki can be easily moved, a forum is a little more complicated. Moving from wikidot would mean moving all the information from the forums to a new content system, new logins, new everything. Besides, wikidot does allow a tremendous amount of customization and management. I am working on a site overhaul, and another graphic designer member has already graciously contributed with a site logo.
I do agree that it is frustrating that we can't host files of any significant size here though, but that is also a good thing. OS X on non-Apple hardware is still one of those fringe areas, and some files that are offered up for download may or may not always be fully legal. That being said, wikidot does allow filehosting, but I have only allowed uploading from wiki team members.
The wiki *is* editable by the masses, in the sense that I allow anyone who expresses interest in editing it to do so. You only have to apply for wiki team membership separately. I think it helps prevent vandalism and encourages quality control, and many unmoderated wikis still require a valid login nowadays. There really is little point in allowing every forum poster to automatically have wiki editing privileges, when in spite of multiple requests for wiki editors on the forums, relatively few actually took up the call, and only a handful of these have actually made any changes to the wiki with new material.
Also, I did not mean to imply that the whole community is gathered here and only here. That would be an unfounded boast. For starters, InsanelyMac is the center of the entire OSX86 community, and no matter how "united" the eee OSX community gets here or on other sites, we should all still participate over there. We encourage cross posting here, there and everywhere else. ipis-osx was meant as a staging area that augments our sub-community of netbook OSX users. I am not in competition with other communities established for the same or similar purpose either, but since the establishment of this site, I like to think that even members from other communities at least lurk over here to see what is going on. This was especially true at the height of the audio development threads. The point that I was trying to make is that this site has earned recognition as one of the major places to go for people trying to get OSX up and running on the Eee and other netbooks, and I think that the established "brand recognition" and Google page rank is a good reason to stay put on wikidot. That's what I meant by community "unity" - not all the people and work are here, but everyone still knows to come here and have a look around. It would be nice to have our own domain name rather than just a subdomain though, but that is easily fixed as well.
At any rate, I welcome any suggestions for site improvement, and mostly everything you mentioned is already possible on wikidot. I just haven't done all the template and CSS work to tie everything together more effectively on the front page, and if you really have the time to volunteer, I would be more than happy to have your time and experience for the community. I would also welcome co-administrators, as I don't want to be the only one calling the shots around here, but so far the most active members here who have attained moderator status are more on the dev side than the site management side.
This brings me to my last point for hosting the community on a managed site rather than having it privately hosted. My past experience with niche hobbyist communities like this is that you can't predict who is here to stay. One moment a guy gets an eee and is the most enthusiastic poster on the scene, and the next thing you know, the eee gets sold or stolen or lost, or the guy gets a new job, or family, etc. and that person just disappears from the whole scene. If that person also happens to be the gatekeeper to the site, then you just lost your community. I've seen it happen — I used to run a major Linux-on-Jornada group, took the offer from another community member to get a domain name off of his hosting plan, only to suffer every time we needed to change the site IP or other trivial tasks after he got too busy for the group. The lesson learned was to put the knowledge up on an established content site where even if I or some other key member decided to leave (and this usually happens without notice), the community keeps going.
To sum up, I didn't mean to come off as being defensive of the site or being annoyed at your suggestion, nor am I a wikidot fanboy. However, I did pick wikidot because I do like the content management system in place here after reviewing a lot of the other free wiki sites out there, and I feel the inadequacies you have pointed out are not because of the lack of capability but more due to under-utilization of the features that are already here. I would like to invite you to look into what can be done here and lend your skills and experience to the ipis-osx site overhaul.
Thanks,
snickers
