I know this question isn't geared toward me, but I'd like to take the liberty to respond. I've noticed that activity has slowed down too. A reason may be because some people have been criss crossing the globe, getting married, building new wikis or whatever else.

From your question I think you are basing the lack of a lively community on an slow down of an "application development", which I interpret to mean the technical aspects of the site.

Here, on Crossroads, the issue is not the technical aspects. Crossroads is a user friendly site, though a few additional features would be nice. As a member of the community and one that is likely to use the site from the consumer's perspective, meaning for enjoyment only, I don't see a problem with how the site is operating. The issue is where's the info about this site!? No one is going to magically discover this place. A quick Google search only shows results for Crossroads when I type "Crossroads World66", but how likely is it that anyone not connected with the site already will search for the magic string that produces results?

If we get some interwiki links going from Wikitravel, or W66, or the new site that you mention then traffic will increase and with that the community will grow and community interaction will increase in the long run.

IB has some power in the business world so it'd be wise to release a press release and send it out to several traveler oriented media outlets. Maybe you, if you have connections could suggest such a thing, or Evan could develop interwiki links and we'll link to Xroads from WT.

In short, from the consumer's perspective I think it'd be too early to give up on the site. Once the site begins to be advertised the community will grow and community interaction will grow. By the way, the most important thing for a community to sustain itself is interaction, so when you note that there have been some "interesting intercultural exchanges" I think that observation is an indication of Crossroads potential.

Hi Reen,

You beat me to this-- I was just going to post something this week.

I'm sorry I've been slow on the updates, but there's actually development going on that just isn't visible here (we have a development installation now, so we don't break what we've got here!).

I've rolled out a few features recently, but we've been waiting on the new version of Drupal (which just went stable last week, finally!) so we can upgrade before making any major changes (that would just have to be upgraded too). I need to confirm that all 40 or so modules we're using have all be upgraded and then we'll take the leap.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that most of the 75+ beta users we have keep checking back-- and there's some great blog entries and images up as well as continuing forum discussions.

Thanks for staying involved! Admin Maj