Twitter Updates are not a replacement for real News and Community involvement

Just a brief note to the Curverider folks and key developers:

Twitter Updates are not a replacement for real News and Community involvement

Honestly, I think very few people care about the Twitter Updates. What is encouraging is to see Dave, Brett, Cash and Pete Harris actually communicate on the community or make posts on the News section.

Is 1.7 stable/final really all that much off in the distance? We don't know!  It was due out certainly before the end of 2009.

Can't whatever needs to be fixed be fixed and get this thing out, so that we can start using the official release and plugin developers will base all of their plugin updates and new plugins off of this version?

And then maybe we can wait on any major updates until Summer!  Woo hoo!  :-)

  • Further to that thread, http://news.elgg.org/ has a post addressing this.

  • No, Brett and Kevin, the point is, news should be on Elgg.org (or News.Elgg.org, if you prefer) and it should be more frequent. Many - including myself - pay no attention to Google groups or discussions on Google. Who cares about Google? I don't!  I only care about what is here on Elgg.  And if the actual posts are over one month apart, it's not good for the community!

    I have certainly been aware of 1.7a for some time.  I have been downloading the SVN regularly too.  However, we all want an official release of 1.7 stable, because it is affecting the plugin developers and we all want to start from square one, to use an expression.  So, more involvment from Brett, Cash and Dave on the actual Elgg.org domain is what is actually going to drive the project.  I guarantee you.

    Thanks for reading. Thanks for responding!  :-)

  • Yakiv - this probably won't make you feel any better but communication from the core developers has really improved over the past several months from what it was before that. Brett especially has been doing a good job of putting up news and interacting with the community.

     

    To clarify what my role is here, I am not employeed by Curverider http://curverider.co.uk/about.php <- I'd normaly put parentheses around that URL and end with a period, but Elgg has a bug with its url parsing...

    For the 1.7 release, I rewrote chunks of the REST/RPC hybrid web services API. After I finished that, I fixed some bugs and no one complained about that so I fixed a bunch more :). I am not an administrator on this site and I do not have publishing permission to the news.elgg.org site. Nothing I say should be taken as official though it may be informed through conversations with Brett, Nick and Dave. I am fairly active on the community site and couldn't imagine becoming more active. There is only so much time in the day and I would like to write some code every now and then.

  • @Cash, thanks!  I know things have improved and there have been some issues and transitions, with lead people going and you and Brett stepping in. I also know that you are careful to clarify often and everywhere, that you are not employed by Curverider.  However, we all feel that you should be and that you are invaluable!  ...I also understand that if you were too active here, you would not be able to do the work on the Elgg core and modules that you are doing.  However - and I speak for myself - you brighten my day every time I see you on here!  :-)  It means that one of the important Elgg developers is interacting with us and we feel that things are still moving forward!

  • For the news blog, when I have something noteworthy to say I post it...else I have my head down in code.  Like Cash says, the more time spent writing blog posts and commenting, the less time there is fixing bugs and getting the next version ready.  When I first joined, I was spending over 14 hours a day between answering questions on the community site/Google group and trying to fix bugs.  That lasted about 3 months until I realized I would quickly burn out.

    I'm not saying there is no time for any communication, as I consider it part of my job to relay news from the core team to the community, but I am saying that there is no use in posting a blog when there is no news.  That's why we've asked for patience :)

    As for the Google groups, they are important because they're extremely relevant to Elgg's development.  I have thought about getting rid of them to force consolidation of discussion on the community site, but that's just not a possibility.  Discussions on the mailing list are often more technical than on the community site and honestly I would like even more development discussion on the mailing list and have the community site be the spot for end-user support.

    Dave and I have been talking about ways to improve development on core...many ideas have been passed around but for a number of reasons nothing has been implemented yet.  It's definitely on our agenda, but there's nothing to be done yet.

    One last thing...being an employee of Curverider is not a requirement for being on Elgg's core team.  I asked Cash if he would take on fixing the services API--an area that sorely needed attention--because he showed solid programming skills, an understanding of Elgg's APIs & general architecture and philosophies, was very active on the community site, the groups, & in trac, and had experience in this area.  He's gone on to fix loads of bugs and I definitely appreciate it.

  • @Brett - you (and Dave) need to understand the difference between real and perceived movement. Real movement is critical. Perceived movement is necessary. If the captain and crew never make any appearances to the passengers, the passengers begin to wonder if the ship is really moving anywhere, though they can see that something is happening.  It's not a good feeling!

    I think that you and Cash should get on and respond to certain posts that don't show a good understanding of Elgg, how it actually works, but are quite technical in nature. Try to let others respond to, "I tried to install Elgg on GoDaddy and it didn't work" kind of posts.

    So, again, the blog on News.Elgg.org is necessary, because it gives us the feeling that things really are moving.  You can't argue with that.  So, if you think there is no news to report, find something to talk about that Curverider is talking about, in terms of Elgg and it's development.

    Again, as far as Google groups, you say they are necessary because they are more technical discussion.  You've got to be kidding.  Take a real walk around this site and you'll see PLENTY of technical discussion.  That's insulting.  You guys need to get rid of the Google groups and get yourselves over here.  This is what is driving people nuts.  Who cares about Google groups!  I don't seriously think any of us do!  What we care about is this site.

    If you want to create your own technical discussion site, for super-booper Elgg techy elitest discussion, that none of us know about and that you all log into and discuss things, then okay, go for it.  But, stay involved here or your project is going to wither and die.  Just friendly advice!

  • Major contributors to Elgg should not have to be employed by Curverider. I'm perfectly happy with my situation as it is now! The reason I try to stress that I'm not a Curverider developer is that they (Dave, Brett, et al) have the final say on things and I want people to understand that what I say isn't official. I wouldn't want something that I say come back to haunt Curverider.

    This is a community site. One of the best ways to grow the community and keep the community informed is for members of the community to take on tasks. If someone who is following the commits in svn would occasionally post updates to the community site letting people know of a serious bug that has been fixed or a nice feature that was added, people here will have a better idea of the progress that is being made. The more that the core developers have to do, the less time they have for writing code and fixing bugs.

  • @ ?

    maybe an rss feed for news.elgg.org from that page http://trac.elgg.org/elgg/log/trunk

     

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