freedom of expression is more significant to me than elgg, so i am leaving.

since i do not wish to participate in a dictatorial, controlling environment where those 'on high' swoop in and censor and control without consultation - i will no longer be participating in this community, nor offering support to any of my plugins here. despite having invested several years of coding experience into this project in useful ways, i value integrity and free will far more than i do any piece of software or corporate policy.

i now see exactly what richard stallman meant when he delineated between open source and free software - i didn't comprehend him at that time - he is correct when he effectively said that any software environment and the coders that support it, that operate in a way that is any other than 'totally free' will always attempt to control you in some way when you interact with it/them.

control is never a solution and is always the problem.

truly i do not wish to dump elgg, however, i will not compromise here.

to attempt to limit and control the activity of those who co-create a community that provides free software TO BUILD COMMUNITIES, shows a fundamental lack of comprehension of what the essence of a community IS and does not give me confidence in the awareness and understanding of the ones involved who would make such a choice.

  • while i value the words of appreciation here, you would be wise to more deeply question the causes of the challenges and what changes are needed; moreso than to think of how to keep me here when i am uncomfortable.

    after exploring the oxwall forums and some other equivalent software packages, i realised some points that i didn't already comment on here. some are lengthy/complex and not everyone will be open enough to receive them - just as some have commented without reading the thread here.. so i will only share the short ones.

    when i looked at oxwall, i immediately saw the difference there. they know what a community IS and they build communities; they are doing more than just 'making some code'.

    without going into depth about the pros and cons of each service, i just want to say this - i perceive that the apparent hierarchy within the elgg group is preventing the necessary balance and harmonious evolution of elgg and this community. i also perceive that the commercial intentions of the core developers are being allowed to control the destiny of elgg in a detrimental way. the objectives of the hierachy have always been somewhat unshared with the community and i feel the community has continuously been ignored and overlooked - this is the common modus operandi of corporate entities and is generally the cause of a large percentage of our planet's problems. 

    i intuit that these ones seek to harness elgg for their own purposes and do not give respect to the group/community here, just as they themselves feel/think that they are not being given the respect that they deserve. they do not generally participate in forming relationships with others (the essence of community) and are 'stuck in their heads' with not much intution/feeling or heart presence to guide them to more enjoyable experiences. the fact that there is no response from any of them on this topic except 'do not talk about anything other than elgg' should be more than ample evidence of this. i am not attacking anyone here, i am simply sharing what i am observing and feeling - i even saw a comment in the oxwall forum from one there who, when comparing the various social network softwares available said 'i don't know why but elgg gives me the creeps'.

    i understand that the core developers may be overwhelmed by the nearly 1000 issues in github and also having the role of adminning the community here. i comprehend why that might cause them to perceive the voices of the community as a 'problem' more than a 'gift'. beneficial change can always be allowed, such as - for example, having someone focussed on being admin in the community who is not a core developer.. someone with a passion for community and human interaction, more than source code. ignoring these issues will not resolve them, they will only change form and will eventually collapse the endevour in one way or another.

  • There are countless ways by which members of this community can meet and discuss any topic. Of course there is value in tangential/non-Elgg conversations but there is also a cost, primarily in keeping them from disrupting the primary goal of this site.

    Let's focus our energy on improving this community to better serve both purposes.

  • Thanks Ura. As I said, if I have understood properly, one solution will be to present a filtered river/activity stream or to remove river notifications but not the actual pages/discussions. This is done in most communities so as to encourage community discussion, yet to keep the focus in place who are coming for another main purpose, other than those discussions.

    I do visit Oxwall forum from time to time - it is much much more commercially oriented than Elgg and I have found no such kind and freindly souls in Oxwall, Drupal, Wordpress like you, Ura or Iionly as in Elgg. This is very true. Recently in Oxwall forum they just deleted http://www.oxwall.org/forum/topic/15724 when people were expressing unhappiness over the latest 1.6 release. The Google cache still holds the page but the admins there deleted honest user voices. I have seen so far no such deletion in Elgg.

  • @Michele A decent indicator of Elgg dev experience might be authored commits in the Elgg repo. https://github.com/Elgg/Elgg/graphs/contributorshttp://www.ohloh.net/p/elgg/contributors?query=&sort=commits but personal referrals and testimonials are about the only reliable way to choose a programmer contractor.

  • Hmm , yes this community have some strict rules that others open source communities don't have! but lol i can't even do anything! we need to follow the rules! 

    The community.elgg.org should be open.community.elgg.org lol where everyone are free to share there thoughts!

    @ura soul , lol i don't know what to say, but as others said, you should rethink. 

    ^_^

    @All, oh shit we are late, hurry , change your clothes and lets go to dance bar! leave the work now!

     

     

  • Looks like Oxwall has integrated with oDesk to solve this problem. Here's a query for Elgg with at least 4 stars and 100 billed hours.

  • @Steve , you will not go to bar with us? no ? oh man come on! and @Michele you? and what about you @ura soul , come on everyone lets go to bar!

  • Freedom of expression is not being violated by requesting conversations remain on topic. None of the admins' actions prevent you from expressing yourself as you see fit through appropriate venues. The Elgg community site is a topic-specific community, and so it is not an appropriate venue for unrelated posts. Please keep conversations productive and on topic.

  • hi guys, because they create in the community a chat to know each other better and talk more freely.

  • I would like to clear some of the made accusations:

    i also perceive that the commercial intentions of the core developers are being allowed to control the destiny of elgg in a detrimental way

    I'm not aware of any commercial intentions. What exactly are these claimed intentions?

    Do you know what is in common with the following:

    • Administering the Elgg community site
    • (...and elgg.org, blog.elgg.org, docs.elgg.org and the servers)
    • Developing new features to Elgg core
    • Reviewing and testing code patches from other devs in Github
    • Waking up 2am (because of timezone difference) to have a meeting with the core team
    • Reading around 100 email notifications per day from Github and the community forums
    • Helping out people in the community

    Answer: I do all of these but I do not get paid anything for doing it. Only once during my life has someone from the community actually paid me for making a custom plugin for them.

    the objectives of the hierachy have always been somewhat unshared with the community and i feel the community has continuously been ignored and overlooked

    Sometimes I have trouble keeping up even with the discussion between the other members of the core team! Let alone the hundreds of posts in the community. Also many of the pull request made by other core devs are often a complete surprise for me!

    All in all I can assure you the core team does not have any secret commercial agenda. (Or perhaps I'm the only member who hasn't been told about it.)

    they do not generally participate in forming relationships with others (the essence of community) and are 'stuck in their heads' with not much intution/feeling or heart presence to guide them to more enjoyable experiences.

    I chat with many community members online (e.g. in Skype and Google hangouts). Some of them have become very good friends of mine.