Hi Lex--

> > We've already done much more than a little sleuthing, for several
> > months. And when I say "we", I'm referring to dozens of members of
> > the community.
>
> At least one of them is prominent on Google.

     We're finding out that doesn't matter a whole lot, necessarily.
There are several people for whom it is quite easy to find an email
address on Google, but that email address bounces, so the fact that
they're on Google doesn't really matter. To make things even more fun,
we keep getting new people referring us to those dead addresses
(reminding us how easy it was to find them ;). So, it'd be nice to just
publicize the list of bouncing email addresses... but it's possible that
some of them could just be bouncing temporarily for some reason (this
has already happened with one person), so we don't publicize them so as
to avoid spam problems.

> ...this thread is the first I heard about a missing-people list and a
>  deadline.

     The deadline is new, as I mentioned in the first message of this
thread[1]. The missing-people list started on 4 November 2006, along
with the rest of the contributor database[2].

> If you made an early call for help in finding people, it did not
> circulate very far.

     I've been using squeak-dev, mentioning the contributor
information-gathering effort both in separate messages and the Squeak
Foundation board meeting notes since the initial announcement. As I
recall, you said you've been having email trouble; perhaps that explains
why you haven't seen some of the messages. I've also been talking up the
effort on the Squeak IRC channel, where there's been a link to the
contributor database in the channel topic since November.

> Anyway, it's a clear sign that the community has new people in it, and
> that the new folks don't even know who a lot of the older folks are.
> I am not used to thinking of Squeak as being that old!

     Heh, yeah; I've noticed that happening two or three times now, with
different sets of new old-timers. :)


-C

[1] http://tinyurl.com/2kdprd (lists.squeakfoundation.org)
[2] http://tinyurl.com/27knuz (lists.squeakfoundation.org)

-- 
Craig Latta
improvisational musical informaticist
www.netjam.org
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]