[feedback] How to bring txp back on track ? Let's debate !

colak · 2006-02-25 08:29:07

Well… lets see… txp is an open source software being developed by volunteers. And we know who those people are. We also know that at least one of them, Mary has dropped out (Or has she?… glad to see her back).

The big question here is why is the development team not expanding? What we see in <a href=“http://dev.textpattern.com/browser/”>trac</a> is basically three names. The txp community is littered with programmers, some of which produce some great plugins.

Txp, in my view, is suffering from its success and growth. It has become very popular, very fast, and it has not managed to grow with its users. The problem? More users identify more bugs, request more features, and expect quicker results .

I do not feel that txp is falling behind. I remember the speed txp was developing when the software was in its rc versions and the anticipation of the never to come v1.

Yes I do agree that there has to be a coordinator and this person does not even need to be a programmer. It has to be someone who can liaise between the team and track ‘jobs’. This would create a road map in itself.

My penny’s worth?
<ul><li>Expand the developing team</li><li>Alocate a coordinator for that team</li></ul>

Last edited by colak (2006-02-25 08:30:29)

davidm · 2006-02-25 09:31:33

colak wrote: Well… lets see… txp is an open source software being developed by volunteers. And we know who those people are. We also know that at least one of them, Mary has dropped out (Or has she?… glad to see her back).

That’s one point I was trying to make, you’re way more concise and to the point, thanks for helping me here !

I do not feel that txp is falling behind.

Neither do I…

Yes I do agree that there has to be a coordinator and this person does not even need to be a programmer. It has to be someone who can liaise between the team and track ‘jobs’. This would create a road map in itself. My penny’s worth?<ul><li>Expand the developing team</li><li>Alocate a coordinator for that team</li></ul>

Straight to the point… exactly what we mean here !

Last edited by davidm (2006-02-25 09:31:51)

Skubidu · 2006-02-25 09:38:12

<blockquote>
<blockquote>Yes I do agree that there has to be a coordinator and this person does not even need to be a programmer. It has to be someone who can liaise between the team and track ‘jobs’. This would create a road map in itself. My penny’s worth?<ul><li>Expand the developing team</li><li>Alocate a coordinator for that team</li></ul></blockquote>

Straight to the point… exactly what we mean here !
</blockquote>

I second that.

neutrino · 2006-02-25 13:26:08

colak said:

is suffering from its success and growth. It has become very popular, very fast, and it has not managed to grow with its users . . .

I so totally agree. As a 2005er and not a 2004er I have to say that to me it seems that the new users are more of a pain than a gift or a tool (that’s not what I think but what I perceive to be the message that is telegraphed).

For as long as I’ve been here Dean hasn’t been around much so for me, this is first century AD, what is the apostles creed?

So to me the question to the “leaders” is: Does TXP want to grow with its users? Can it? Will it? And how? Or should certain aspects of its growth (the forums, Textpattern.com) be released into the hands of the apostles? (Sorry, I’m forever warped by the image in Jesus Christ Superstar of the people dancing around the figurehead singing: “what’s the buzz, tell me what’s happening!”). Folks are still waiting on that dude’s return, too.

Sorry jdueck, I work in local gov and you’ve got to have some sort of plan or else, o my god . . . but it can be loose . . . a sketch even . . .

davidm · 2006-02-25 14:08:35

neutrino wrote: I so totally agree. As a 2005er and not a 2004er I have to say that to me it seems that the new users are more of a pain than a gift or a tool (that’s not what I think but what I perceive to be the message that is telegraphed).

Not at all the message I am trying to convey here. New users are a gift, because they will have a fresh take on things and a fresh look at the software. Also, it guarantees that the project will always have fresh blood to take over what will be left by those who unavoidably drop out.

We “old timers” that lived the Dean Era as you call it, just miss the community’s spirit as it was…

The message would rather be : if you don’t build an organization (once again : organization doesn’t mean bureaucracy, that’s caricatural at best…) that allow core contributors, old timers and advanced users to just… contribute and feel part of things, then they’ll drop out (certainly I will).

For as long as I’ve been here Dean hasn’t been around much so for me, this is first century AD, what is the apostles creed?

lol… I kind of like the analogy ;P

So to me the question to the “leaders” is: Does TXP want to grow with its users? Can it? Will it? And how? Or should certain aspects of its growth (the forums, Textpattern.com) be released into the hands of the apostles? (Sorry, I’m forever warped by the image in Jesus Christ Superstar of the people dancing around the figurehead singing: “what’s the buzz, tell me what’s happening!”). Folks are still waiting on that dude’s return, too.

Well that’s a pretty good analogy too of what I was explaining above…

Sencer · 2006-02-25 14:14:57

I’ve started typing up a repsonse to comment on the many, many different issues that have been raised in this thread (some wrongly IMHO), but both times I aborted after about 2000 words. It’s just too much and I fear it would split the discussion even further into the different sidetracks (The secret complete answers will be declassified in 2027 ;) ). So instead I’ll spontaneously focus on what seems to the main issue:

I take it that the software is satisfactory, and the the progress of the software is satisfactory – at least a lot of people stepping in to argue for the dev-team, as well as alexandra and davidm themelves have said so multiple times. So that which is under discussion is everything else that affects textpattern as a project, not textpattern as a software.

And which parts of “textpattern as a project” are really under debate here? It’s not the “future proofness”. I am pretty sure it was not your intention, yet there are already two people that feel
“insecure” about whether to invest in Textpattern given the “current issues”. Let’s make one thing perfectly clear: It’s absolutely safe to use textpattern and to invest in learning it. More so than with a lot
of new stuff that is being hyped here and there as a new silver bullet. Due to the requests and demands by the community (hinthint) Textpattern has opted for a proper release management, which means a
stable 4.0.x branch which sees releases today, and which will continue to see releases also after we release new major versions (crockery). This means that users will continue to be able to use a safe and proven software and are not forced to upgrade to continue to get support. And that users are free to switch when and if they like to. But it also means that things can move somewhat slower for a while. A lot of work has gone into fixing loads of bugs (reported by the community – hinthint) which also meant that shiny new features and other great step forwards were on the backseat for a while. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Yes, efforts are shifting to crockery now. This may not have been the concerns of the thread-initiators, but I felt it was necessary to make this absolutely clear to the other people following this discussion, which seemed to be getting the wrong ideas.

Also, to so suggest Textpattern has not been user-driven (in terms of features) sounds like a very funny idea to me. Yes, I know what alex said, and yes, it is true, but it it is not the only truth. Look at the release-announcements and which things have been added and tell me which ones of those were not requested by the community (404-handling? error-pages? customized comments? customized comment-previews? anti-spam measures for comments?). Somehow it was also conveniently forgotten that it was zem who added the feature requests pages to the wiki, so that users could coordinate on fleshing out their ideas. Discussions in the forum can go round on 10 pages and never get anywhere (thread-mode) whereas with a wiki-page (in document-mode) it is very easy to get a grasp of a) how much interest there is and b) what the “state” of the feature request is (how well hought out the details are). And those pages are of course for everyone, including non-developers. See:
http://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?id=13959
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?DocumentMode

<b>“Textpattern back on track”</b>

So, I think the discussion has been framed in a somewhat misleading way. The desire that I hear speaking out of those who started the thread, is about the how of involving members of the community, not the “if”. (And I honestly hope, there’s never been any doubt an wether we want that help. Of course we do, and there’s plenty of places where we ask explicitly for it.)

The current way of involving the community has been extremely democratic if you ask me. One of the aspects of this thread is to ask for more leadership is, I feel, a testament to that fact. To illustrate this point, let’s look at how the organizational side of documention was handled – which is mentioned twice in the initial post…

Example Project Aspect: Documentation

Textbook was not and is not controlled by Dean or the dev-team, it’s not necessary to ask any of those 4 people to do anything.
Destry (and the other people working on Textbook) have been forever trying to recruite more people to help with documentation.
Destry has been very responsive to ideas and suggestion by the community
A sub-forum was opened here for everybody who wanted to contribute, but didn’t like wikis.
Destry has been very good at communicating what was happening with documentation

I really think that Destry (and the other people working on Textpattern) have been doing a terrific job. (And I am pretty sure, that few, if any, people here would think otherwise).

The inital thread in this topic is saying, with respect to the dcumentation aspect of “textpattern the project”:

And for all the efforts and dedication of Destry, we have been unable to reach critical mass to produce a comprehensive documentation. Same goes for Alicson ’s running Textpattern.org : she too has been doing a great job, but she couldn’t be expected to bring life to this website on her own in the long run. We all have lives, concerns, jobs and as dependable as we can be we can pretend running things on our own. […] So why don’t we add to the developer team different cooperating teams: […] – writers (manual, faq, localisation)

I really seem to be missing how the suggetions put forth are going to change what’s happenin now? Has Destry been secretly turning away people who wanted to get involved? Or is the underlying assuption that when people get a title like “Official Textpattern Director of documentation coordination and realization” that we’ll get more people to help and that they’ll do more work? I am not trying to be snarky here, I am really interested in how things will improve in that specific area by the proposals in this thread – and how that cannot happen now (or is more difficult now or whichever disadvantages there are now with respect to this item).

Organizing community contributions: Current state

The current state of community contributions and how they work is this: People who feel like they can contribute in one area, “need” to get up and do that. If there is overlap to other parts of “textpattern the project” than the onus is on that person to find out who the people are with which the overlapping is happening, and they need to talk to them themselves to coordinate what they want to do. Then they need to plan and realize those things, and they may need to convince other related people to do things.
Example: Make-over of all textpattern-sites with a coorprate design (I am not saying we should do this, it’s just an example.) If somebody wanted that to happen today, they would need to find out all the sites involved, like for example: textpattern.com, txp resources, textbook, textgarden, magazine. Then the person would need to talk to all of them, and how they would feel about the idea of changing the layout of the sites. The next step would be, to either make the layout themselves, or together with the other people, or make it public that a talented designer is wanted for the task (or contact those designers privately etc.). After the design is done, it would have to be adapted possibly for different software (like mediawiki and textpattern). And the people in charge of the sites would have to implement those changes technically.

I feel like this is vaguely similar to a peer2peer model. As long as there are enough peers interested in it, it will continue to work, and things will get done. if there’s some “damage”, like people not cooperating, then it will either be routed around if possible (like somebody who wanted to do X, but didn’t, then somebody else does it), or if there are some exclusive resources involved, like for example the svn-code repository, then things may not happen.

The exclusive resources involved in “textpattern the project” which rest with Dean/dev-team are a) the software and b) the website textpattern.com (which includes the forum, the weblog etc.). Everything else, all the other resources rest in the hands of community members, no?

Organizing community contributions: What is suggested

This is where it where it gets a little muddy for me. And I expect you all to correct me on the things I have gotten wrong.

I am guessing that we want the person coming up with a new idea, to have an easier way of getting that idea realized (maybe it’s a designer herself/himself), without having to worry about finding out who is responsible, and what steps he needs to do. Maybe the person only wants to do the design and wants somebody else to take care of the rest. So then, it is argued, there would/should be a coordination-person that that person could go to, and that person would do all the non-design related work. One key-question where I am unclear is: Will that go-to person have any “authoriy”, meaning that if he was in favour of the idea, but the 5 responsible people that are working were against it, would the go-to person have the authority to “force” things into happening? Would there be “forcing” involved if 3 out of 5 were in favor? 4 out of 5?

Coordination is nice and easy to realize when it’s only communication involved (which in organizational terms is really a seperate thing). In fact it can be easily done today. Somebody could try to make a draft of all the people involved that are doing things today, and could offer to mediate ideas between those people.

Actual Coordination is harder, meaning coordination where authority is involved. And I think that’s what zem and several other people tried to point out earlier: As long as it is merely volunteership, it’s tough to expect people to do something against their will – either she/he’s only mildly against it and will do it, when he sees everybody will benefit, in which case no authority would be needed to force him anyway. Or he’s against it so much that he won’t or can’t (and this may not be even that person’s own choice, but be driven by time- or financial reaons), which will lead to conflict that needs to be resolved. I don’t think it’s possible in an Opensource project to execute authority over other people’s time and work.

But if the time and work that is to be controlled is everybody’s own, then we don’t need authority and central coordination, but merely that people communicate with each other. And if the p2p way of everybody talking to the person he wants to talk to doesn’t work, and there is a desire to have mediators that do all the communication, then today there is nothing which prevents that model from being realized. The questions left are:

1) Do the majority of the people currently doing work want mediators for their communications? Or do they prefer talking directly with the other people involved?

2) Are there a lot of people that are currently not contributing, but would start contributing if they knew, that they could talk with mediators instead of the other people directly? (This will be tough to answer, because virtually in all cases people tend to overestimate what contributions [in terms of time and output] they can deliver. This is not an accusations, but an observation, I am just as guilty as anybody else here ;))

3) If both of the above can be determined to be in favour of mediators, we would need to think about how to “find” these mediators. Is it best, when the people doing most of the work vote for people they have already good communications going with? Should it be decided by popular vote in the forum taking into account potential contributors? Or Should Dean “appoint” people to mediate?

Exclusive resources: another look

I’ve fleetingly mentioned that the “only” exclusive resource with Dean and us devs is the code repository and textpattern.com. And I put “only” in quotes now, because that is a substantial part of the project. (Though the sheer possibility of discussions about the four letter f-word ;), show that not even that is so special that it couldn’t be routed around). So how are/will those be handled:

Forum: The need for an administrator was mentioned, it’s true and it will happen shortly. So there will be a goto-guy ahem goto-person with respect to forum responsibilities
Weblog: I don’t know if there’s much interest in that. If people doing work want to have it mentioned on the weblog or are interested in writing guest articles, it’s something we could talk about ( I don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible). And we won’t hesitate to point out things that want attention (just email us). But there is already an excellent magazin which IIRC is always interested in more writers and topics, and we don’t want to step into competition with them.
textpattern.com: There were plans to get a talented designer to redo textpattern.com with the relase of 4.0; and when that didn’t work out, shortly after that. This didn’t happen, I don’t know if it was our “failure”, or if the person who was going to do it couldn’t for some reason, or something inbetween. The site is managed with textpattern as a software (d’uh), so we (the devs) do have access to it. So that’s something we could get rolling. I understand that there’s a desire to permanently have someone that is present and available for it, though that would be exclusively Dean’s call, so I can’t comment on that.
subdomains are again something where exclusive control is with Dean. I am mainly mentioning it for the sake of completeness, I don’t think that a domain/subdomain is really an impedient when it comes to working on something for “textpattern the project”. If all other voluntueer sites are interested in uniting their sites under one domain, and to have that group of people decide what will be accepted under that domain, that could be done I guess. But that’s for those people to decide.
code repository and release management is something that Dean has delegated to us three (devs). If understood things right there is no complaint about this (correct?). Due to technical reasons this also includes the default theme for textpattern, and the admin-layout. Both of which we want to (and partly even must) change for crockery’s release. Given that we’re not very good at this, this will be partly delegated and worked with people form the cmmunity. As son as pedro stops working 25h days in his day—to-day work, he’ll be talking about UI more. I very much enjoyed mary’s work and said so on the mailing-list. I think it’s a good fit for crockery and said so on the mailing-list (I guess paraphrasing it as “nice, but it has no priority” is technically correct, but makes it sounds a lot different from what I actually said. My response is on the public dev-mailing-list for people to read (December 2005). We are also very interested in what the results of textplates will be (which I also plugged on our weblog). Though for crockery we would of course need a new “theme” that will take advantage of the new things to come. We will be asking for help there once we have some release candidates or betas rolling out (which is still months away). As for 4.0.x, it is in maintenance mode and there’s plenty of good reasons to not shift things around severly (like doing a complete new theme/layout). I explain this in the post to the mailing-list.
technically supplemental sites for a lack of a better word, I mean things like Trac, our internal bugtracker, the mailing-lists and so on. IIRC they are distributed on to several different machines in several different geographical locations, and we (the dev-team) too have had some difficulties here and there, because we didn’t have the necessary access to fix things ourselves. We’re in the process of working things out there, though little of that is connected to organizing community contributions. We do hope to arrive at a solution for a bug and feature-tracker that is directly accesible by more people than only ourselves, in the meantime we’re making do with the tools available, which on the public side, are the forums, the wiki and the mailing-list.

That’s a rough run-down of the exclusive resources that rest with Dean/dev-team currently. A lot of the other textpattern related sites are managed by people other than us. And if there is indeed a need to get those other people to be more responsive, or if you want to convince other people to give up more control, that’s something the people running those sites have to decide.

Summary

I’ve tried to explan why I think that lot of actual authority already rests in member of the community, with respect to several resource-sites. I described how I think change can currently be made happen within the structure that is available today, and IMHO that’s a lot of potential there that can be tapped into, without havin to wait for some officialness to “descend”. I also posed some questions on whether I understood the concerns and suggestions correctly, so any clarifications on that I will appreciate.
Those resources that are exclusive to us, some will be made “more accessible” soon (new administrator in forum, theme/layout related stuff in the course of crockery getting sooner to release), for some things the authority will remained with a small group (like the code repository) which doesn’t seem to be a concern if I understood comments in this thread right.

I know there’s still some questions that I haven’t addressed at all (it’s simply too much to respond to everything), there’s some things that I am sure Dean will (and really only he could) talk about himself, hopefully when he’s back from travelling (IIRC sometime next week). I don’t think that should hold us (the community) back though.

Last edited by Sencer (2006-02-25 15:37:12)

hcgtv · 2006-02-25 14:56:46

Sencer wrote:
Coordination is nice and easy to realize when it’s only communication involved (which in organizational terms is really a seperate thing). In fact it can be easily done today. Somebody could try to make a draft of all the people involved that are doing things today, and could offer to mediate ideas between those people.

For those of us that are new to the community, this would help tremendously.

I for one don’t know all the players involved, past or present. So it’s very hard to offer any help because we don’t know who to contact at times. Also, we have pick our words right when we comment on the forum, because we don’t know who we’re responding to.

Skubidu · 2006-02-25 15:27:09

Thanks, Sencer, for this long answer!

Before we started this thread, Alex, David and I had log email discussions about Textpattern. We all are in some kind in love with Textpattern: it has a vital and very warm community and it is a real good CMS. Textpattern is a community project and we are part of this community: That’s why we would like to help moving things forward. So you’re right: “It’s not the “future proofness” we are talking about, it “is about the how of involving members of the community”. We are not saying that you and the other devs aren’t doing a good job. It’s fantastic what Textpattern has become, and we know that this just could happen because of your work. We honour that and we have pointed that out – hopefully :)

As I am not a PHP programmer (well, I’ve learned to create some small plugins, but nothing more) I can’t contribute patches. So there are only a few things left, I could do: writing and designing. I’ve done a lot of writing and translations and I’ve been using Textpattern on several sites. I found many things I really liked during using the interface but I found other I didn’t like at all.

One example (there could be many others): I really was impressed about Mary’s admin facelift. It is a great opportunity to rework and improve the usability of the interface. And here is the point: It’s about things I know: It’s not PHP it’s HTML and CSS and it’s about using the admin area. It would be a lot of work to finish this facelift, but I would like to help. So I followed the discussion (in the forums and on the mailinglists) but there was never a point, where someone of the official developers open a door and said that’s the way we’re going. It could have been like this: “Okay, we really like this scetch of a new interface. It’s something we would like to implement in a future version.” (until here, it’s what you have been saying) “Let’s say we implement it in version 4.1 that might come out between april and august 2006. So please could you do one thing: Create static HTML site of every subtab, so we know how it should look like and that we are sure nothing gets lost. It is Mister X who cares about the version 4.1 – so please contact him that you can arrange things.”

That’s the point where we are talking about communication. And it’s this kind of communication that is important because you need to know if it makes sence to invest time in these things.

Forum: The need for an administrator was mentioned, it’s true and it will happen shortly. So there will be a goto-guy ahem goto-person with respect to forum responsibilities

Good to hear that.

Weblog: I don’t know if there’s much interest in that. If people doing work want to have it mentioned on the weblog or are interested in writing guest articles, it’s something we could talk about ( I don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible). And we won’t hesitate to point out things that want attention (just email us). But there is already an excellent magazin which IIRC is always interested in more writers and topics, and we don’t want to step into competition with them.

I think the weblog was a big improvement so I don’t have to complain about the way it is.

textpattern.com: There were plans to get a talented designer to redo textpattern.com with the relase of 4.0; and when that didn’t work out, shortly after that. This didn’t happen, I don’t know if it was our “failure”, or if the person who was going to do it couldn’t for some reason, or something inbetween. The site is managed with textpattern as a software (d’uh), so we (the devs) do have access to it. So that’s something we could get rolling. I understand that there’s a desire to permanently have someone that is present and available for it, though that would be exclusively Dean’s call, so I can’t comment on that.
bq. * subdomains are again something where exclusive control is with Dean. I am mainly mentioning it for the sake of completeness, I don’t think that a domain/subdomain is really an impedient when it comes to working on something for “textpattern the project”. If all other voluntueer sites are interested in uniting their sites under one domain, and to have that group of people decide what will be accepted under that domain, that could be done I guess. But that’s for those people to decide.

Well, here were missing Dean, because he is the one to decide. I think redoing the main website would be very important: it’s some kind of a visiting card. And I think this website has to reflect Textpattern’s multi-linguality.

code repository and release management is something that Dean has delegated to us three (devs). If understood things right there is no complaint about this (correct?). Due to technical reasons this also includes the default theme for textpattern, and the admin-layout. Both of which we want to (and partly even must) change for crockery’s release. Given that we’re not very good at this, this will be partly delegated and worked with people form the cmmunity. As son as pedro stops working 25h days in his day—to-day work, he’ll be talking about UI more. I very much enjoyed mary’s work and said so on the mailing-list. I think it’s a good fit for crockery and said so on the mailing-list (I guess paraphrasing it as “nice, but it has no priority” is technically correct, but makes it sounds a lot different from what I actually said. My response is “on the public dev-mailing-list for people to read”: http://lists.textpattern.com/mailman/private/txp-dev/2005-December/000159.html (December 2005). We are also very interested in what the results of textplates will be (which I also plugged on our weblog). Though for crockery we would of course need a new “theme” that will take advantage of the new things to come. We will be asking for help there once we have some release candidates or betas rolling out (which is still months away). As for 4.0.x, it is in maintenance mode and there’s plenty of good reasons to not shift things around severly (like doing a complete new theme/layout). I explain this in the post to the mailing-list.

You are right that not complaining about that. Not at all. We are missing a “considered feature list”: Thing that have been in the discussion (forums, mailinglist) that are not implemented yet but which will be integrated in future releases. So it’s about the if not about the when.

technically supplemental sites for a lack of a better word, I mean things like Trac, our internal bugtracker, the mailing-lists and so on. IIRC they are distributed on to several different machines in several different geographical locations, and we (the dev-team) too have had some difficulties here and there, because we didn’t have the necessary access to fix things ourselves. We’re in the process of working things out there, though little of that is connected to organizing community contributions. We do hope to arrive at a solution for a bug and feature-tracker that is directly accesible by more people than only ourselves, in the meantime we’re making do with the tools available, which on the public side, are the forums, the wiki and the mailing-list.

I can’t say much about this point. But I can say, that it’s good to read that there are things happening in the background. As a normal user you just can see the dev via the Trac and their postings in these forums. If it’s becoming silent you neither do know if something is happening nor what is happening.

Last edited by Skubidu (2006-02-25 15:28:19)

neutrino · 2006-02-25 16:35:33

> davidm wrote:

> bq. neutrino wrote: I so totally agree. As a 2005er and not a 2004er I have to say that to me it seems that the new users are more of a pain than a gift or a tool (that’s not what I think but what I perceive to be the message that is telegraphed).

Not at all the message I am trying to convey here. New users are a gift, because they will have a fresh take on things and a fresh look at the software. Also, it guarantees that the project will always have fresh blood to take over what will be left by those who unavoidably drop out.

@David, I didn’t mean to imply that this was your message or (really) anyone’s in particular, just the general sense that I have of the dot com TXP (which is not the same sense that I have of Dean, the dude). We are not equipped to handle an influx of new users, new patches, new plugins, new themes, new ideas or even converstations like this in a streamlined and efficient way that incorporates the best and sorts out the rest. (Maybe no OS software project is or ever has been, I don’t know, but some rise to the occasion and this seems like TXP’s occasion.)

If I were to sum up again another (or maybe the same) gist I have of many of the points made its: As a community we need to find more and better ways to enable ourselves to consolidate, contribute and communicate our questions, efforts and contributions.

@Devs/Dean, I in no way mean to convey disatisfaction with the software. I love it! I just want to be able to work with the community more effectively and so am looking for instructions clearly posted in a prominent (priority spot) that says WELCOME, new here? Here’s the ropes. I would like the priorities and major projects to be more clear (more marketed). I would like little simple tasks that contribute to an overall vision posted in a prominent place, too. I would like us to figure out what would make us pull together more and not branch out so much. But then I want that for my world not just TXP.

I think/feel this is just some hiccups we are all having and that the result will be exactly what everyone is asking for here, within reason and reality. Everyone here as I see it, cares deeply, knows TXP is special, already contributes greatly and wants to be here and to accomplish more, more efficiently. Very excellent discussion that will take me days and hours to fully appreciate and or even read everybody.

Last edited by neutrino (2006-02-25 16:37:24)

alexandra · 2006-02-25 16:51:45

neutrino points out so much in great words, I don´t need to comment anymore :)

I in no way mean to convey disatisfaction with the software. I love it! I just want to be able to work with the community more effectively and so am looking for instructions clearly posted in a prominent (priority spot) that says WELCOME, new here? Here’s the ropes. I would like the priorities and major projects to be more clear (more marketed). I would like little simple tasks that contribute to an overall vision posted in a prominent place, too. I would like us to figure out what would make us pull together more and not branch out so much.

[Note to myself: we need more women on board]

Still have to read Sencers post carefully… just one note here: ‘email us (devs)’ does not work; tryed it and gave up by now.

Jeremie · 2006-02-26 00:14:21

ramanan wrote:
Textpattern is a tool for managing a weblog.

Well, no it’s not.

Jeremie · 2006-02-26 00:32:40

Overall, a very nice post Sencer. Lot of things, lot of good things. Thanks. It will take some time to digest it.

Sencer wrote:
We’re in the process of working things out there, though little of that is connected to organizing community contributions. We do hope to arrive at a solution for a bug and feature-tracker that is directly accesible by more people than only ourselves, in the meantime we’re making do with the tools available, which on the public side, are the forums, the wiki and the mailing-list.

[And other sentences in the overall post]

It’s very good to know that you three have some kind of control over things. It felt like since Dean drifted away (and well, even before that sometimes) some things you weren’t in control, or maybe in some kind of dark “autopilot”. One example was the TracD down, no communication on it and down&up, fewer commit around it, etc.

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#121 2006-02-25 08:29:07

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#123 2006-02-25 09:38:12

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#124 2006-02-25 13:26:08

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#127 2006-02-25 14:56:46

Re: [feedback] How to bring txp back on track ? Let's debate !

#128 2006-02-25 15:27:09

Re: [feedback] How to bring txp back on track ? Let's debate !

#129 2006-02-25 16:35:33

Re: [feedback] How to bring txp back on track ? Let's debate !

#130 2006-02-25 16:51:45

Re: [feedback] How to bring txp back on track ? Let's debate !

#131 2006-02-26 00:14:21

Re: [feedback] How to bring txp back on track ? Let's debate !

#132 2006-02-26 00:32:40

Re: [feedback] How to bring txp back on track ? Let's debate !

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