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@Tom … your idea is a good alternative and was implemented already by some plugin designers who wanted to continue developing their plugin via the elgg communities site.
If we do eventually assume this kind of model though, there need to be some limits placed on tool access. Commenting, use of the Wire and posts within forum topics are helpful even for brand spankin new users. But only “heroes” and those they designate ought to be able to create pages, upload files and designate forum topics. Again, it’s a question of rolls.
We’ll run into similar problems with overload and inability to moderate if there isn’t some basic role functionality built into the elgg community site architecture.
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I’m hearing many people talking of a fork of Elgg. That is a prospect that raises a good deal of interest with me.
If the current Elgg devs can’t get it together then I am sure there are others who could. You can’t in this day and age just ban critisism – take it on the chin and get over it.
Fork me – this is an interesting idea – I wonder what could become of it?
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I think fork-talk might be a bit premature.
I mean, we’re just on the verge of 1.2 (SVN).
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If the Elgg devs start shutting things down and play run & hide after being upset by a few internet comments, I’d certainly hate to see how they handle the real world of paid commercial support. What will their reaction be to a paying client if the client is [perceived by them to be] difficult? Take their toys and leave and whine about it on Twitter?
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I would like to keep this discussion productive. Antagonism is not going to help. I will not allow this to degenerate into a gripe-fest. It will not help.
I will say this. What really matters is that progress on the code continues and it is available to all.
@forking Consider using your real identity or an identity that we can recognize within this community.
I’ll try to get back with more–perhaps after my kids’ holiday concert.
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If there’s one thing Curverider can learn from this, it’s the gaps in their product and how it relates to a community.
Elgg is supposed to be a social networking tool but it seems that the time from the 1.0 launch to now, which isn’t long, has been a trial by fire and parts of it have been burnt. That’s not uncommon for a new product so I don’t mean that as criticism.
To counter the calls for using phpBB or mediawiki or whatever to support their users and devs, I’d rather see Elgg improved and the current dificulties are hopefully being used to productively add to future versions. If the pain is taken away by using someone elses software then there is no impetus to improve Elgg to address the pain.
The repeated questions from newbies shouldn’t also be dismissed but COUNTED. The same newbie question over and over shows it’s a much requested feature that needs implementing or at least documenting well. Newbies aren’t all developers either so please don’t point them at a wiki page on building a plugin as an answer to a common question.
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Hi Shaun,
But Elgg *is* for developers. Take a look at the “About” text here:
In particular, it says:
“Elgg is an open, flexible social networking engine, designed to run at the heart of any socially-aware application. Building on Elgg is easy, and because the engine handles common web application and social functionality for you, you can concentrate on developing your idea.”
Elgg is an *engine*, not an application. Sure it does do quite a bit out of the box, but if you want to change what it does you need to be a developer.
I have to admit that I did not read that carefully until it was pointed out to me recently by a somewhat exasperated Curverider staff person.
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I see that even more of the community has been shut down from view, over at community.elgg.org. What is ironic to me is that the creators of a social networking software themselves are less capable of managing a social site than we are!
I highly respect many of the posts in this thread. Some really level-headed people are here.
There is a history to this whole attitude from the developers. Go back and read the forums in the days of 0.8/0.9. The threads are still there. And very significant people, like ewout, spoke out against the dangers he saw at the time and how contributors were being trashed. So, I guess this is the same track we are on and I find it very disheartening.
Personally, I love the Elgg software. I prefer it over the typical Joomla/Community Builder. However, I must say that Beat and Nant know how to control their tempers and stay professional! These guys over at Curverider are out of control.
Maybe the developers should do what they feel is best, and just code? And have someone like Steve out in front as the PR guy? Not everyone is good at PR and we are seeing that right now!!!
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Here is a particular thread you should read (it’s not the only one, believe me):
http://classic.elgg.org/mod/vanillaforum/vanilla/comments.php?DiscussionID=1056&page=1
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You know, no one likes to talk “fork”, because it’s offensive and I realize. But, the Mambo people were acting like idiots too and so the Joomla people forked the project. Joomla has become a thousand times more popular than Mambo ever was. Same thing with Netscape. Now we have Firefox. Sometimes the “founders” are so prideful and arrogant that their minds and attitudes simply cannot be changed. So, people regroup and move forward with a fork and the world has been a better place. At this point, if the developers won’t change, I think some key people from the Elgg contributors should take the code and run with it in a new project. Again, it’s not what I want to see, but sometimes it’s only the best thing in the long-run. Just do us a favor if you do fork it; let us know where you went.
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My rather simplistic view, for what it’s worth is that a social networking website might not be the best platform around which to base a elgg specific open source software development community.
Many open source projects do not use their own software to interact with user because it’s simply not suitable.Elgg.org is probably the best way to test elgg in many ways but that, I think, has proven to have downsides.
Also I think a lot of people have different views of what is implied by making a piece of software open source. It does not necessarily, in my opinion, impose an obligation on any one group of people to take wholehearted responsibility for everything that behaves unexpectedly or any additions that might be required for any one of hundreds of possible environments that users choose to put it into.
I hope that makes sense.
I hope people ask themselves what they are entitled to and what they are lucky to have at their disposal.
Elgg goes a long way toward being an ‘out of the box’ solution but as Kevin has eloquently pointed out, it shouldn’t be expected to perform as such without further adaptation appropriate to any specific user requirements.
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The real problem with Elgg is that it is an open source project run by a business. So, from the very get-go, we have a problem or conflict of interest. If the Elgg developers simply saw it as an opportunity for everyone to contribute to their base and thus make their product better, they would benefit in the long run anyway. And if they want to offer unique add-ons and charge for that off on their business site, no one would have a problem. But, we have been suspect of their motives ever since the 0.8/0.9 days when we discovered Searunner, which I believe is Elgg 1.0/1.1. I guess when the cat was out of the bag, they didn’t want to take the money and run. So, maybe a fork is really the only solution at this point, unless attitudes really change over there.
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@Ro Your points regarding the behavior of Elgg developers in the past are relevant. I would appreciate it if you took a cue from most of the other posts in terms of tone. It has been a level headed discussion and I would like to keep it this way. I believe that will best serve our needs. I will consolidate your three posts on this matter into one later.
I don’t think a discussion of forking is productive. If I were developing code, that might make me less inclined to share new work and more inclined to withhold. Nobody wants this. Also, please refrain from name calling.
I understand your anger, but please step back and try to strip away the emotion and state your points as fact or measured opinion.
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Well, I guess we can be thankful for at least one good thing. Elgg 1.2 was just released.
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Hi folks,
We just released some information here: http://community.elgg.org/pg/pages/view/12701/
Ben
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I’m only running mine locally via wamp, but after an ugrade.php, I think I see speed improvements.
Can anybody verify this please?
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Kevin, I was speaking in the more general sense than just the elgg software.
community.elgg.org has failed to handle the community it was supposed to be looking after, be they developers (which covers a wide group from theme fiddlers to beardy PHP devs) or users. I hope Curverider work out why and roll any changes they make into Elgg rather than use something else.
Like you though, it was unclear to me visting elgg.org that Curverider only intended the Elgg software as shipped to be the starting point for a developer’s site.
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Thanks Ben.
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Ro, you’re trolling. I’m not certain what your agenda is, but open source is built upon cooperation; from the start you’ve erroneously accused us of lying about code and having motivations other than those stated. Give it a rest.
I didn’t want to make more comment here, but you’ve made it personal. I’ve known Marcus Povey for 16 years, and I’ve worked with Dave for 5. Neither of their attitudes are “rotten to the core”. They have worked tirelessly and consistently on the project and all the other projects I’ve known them to be a part of, and both believe in doing things well for the right reasons. I’m baffled and more than a little bit horrified that you’ve decided to bring the conversation down to this level.
This is the last comment from anyone in the Elgg team to this thread, or any like it.
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Ro, your comments don’t seem to be finding much sympathy here. The silence you hear from the rest of us translates to “please can it”.
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Also FWIW. I had a semi heated discussion with Ro regarding the tidypics plugin.
He was making some un-diplomatic criticisms of tidypics. Constructive feedback is always welcomed but as you guys can ALL SEE, he has a very hard time finding and using positive wordage. We went back and forth on eachother’s message boards, and the point is, after it all, he erased every one of my posts on his messageboard. So now that I realize, Ro is condemning the elgg team for censoring information and not being “open” … yet he does the same thing …
I hope you can appreciate, from your own experience, that it is harder than you can even know Ro, so please, get off the Elgg team’s back already. -
Matt, take a couple hours and read through the forums from the 0.8/0.9 days and then come back to me.
Ben, I’ve never seen a post from you that was nasty or condescending. However, I have seen plenty of that from Dave and Marcus. So, while you may want to defend your buddies, it doesn’t wash.
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I think Elgg should hire Steve as the PR guy. Maybe the project would not be in it’s current state if the developers stayed in their basements writing code and allowed someone with personal integrity to be out in the light of day, engaging the public.
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@Ro It is too bad that you will not heed my simple request for civility. I deleted some of the posts, but I did not delete all of them. I don’t want to censor anyone’s views.
Please do not overrun my blog with your comments. It is not the tone I want to have representing this blog.
Ro, I am not an apologist for Elgg. To be honest, I doubt I am their favorite person at all.
@ Ben I regret Ro’s series of comments here. You need to know that they do NOT in any way represent my thoughts on the matter, not those of the vast majority of those reading and commenting here.
I appreciate your commenting here and trying to clear the air. I do regret that you will not comment here again. I do think that there are a lot of good thoughts here that I hope you consider. I don’t want you to perceive this thread in a negative light or as bashing you guys. There has been criticism to be sure, but I really think the bulk of this has been constructive.
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I have deleted a few back and forth spats here. I hope it is not perceived as shutting anyone out.
I do not want to have to moderate things here. I think you all know that.
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Apologist is an interesting choice of words, Steve. You are right. You would need to be an apologist for the Elgg developers, since a few of them lack the right spirit to evangelize others with their project in integrity. Do we all really think that the spirit of Searunner is gone from the hearts of the Elgg developers? Common.
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Common sense is not so common. (Voltaire)
„Don’t feed the trolls!“
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Knowledge is power, good_vibrations. Apparently you are ignorant about Searunner and how the Elgg community was almost abandoned. It took a few people figuring it out and blowing the whistle to save the project.
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Trolls — bleh. One of the issues with Elgg has always been (and I’ve been developing Elgg Folio since v0.4) has been the ability of trolls to sidetrack the main developers. I’ve been crushed the last semester, and keeping track of everything simply took too effort to make it worthwhile. Steve, thanks for putting together a useful place to track major events.
P.S. Please keep deleting troll’s comments. Tiring to have that BS
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For anyone who wants to do some research on the topic of Searunner, you can check this out, for one:
http://classic.elgg.org/news/weblog/1754.html
This only happened after a few whistle blowers found out the plan to scrap Elgg and for the commercial Searunner to emerge. After a big stink, Curverider was forced to turn Searunner into Elgg 1.0, thus the current Elgg.
I was around and saw all of this going on. So, when I see ugly attitudes still present from Curverider, you can bet I am unhappy.
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Pingback from Elgg | openedweb.com on December 12, 2008 at 6:44 pm
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What the —-!
I was eager for the release of Elgg 1.0, and when it eventually showed up (late) and in poor condition, largely unsuited for popular adoption*, I was annoyed and disappointed–all the more so when I solved a few problems and had no good way to centrally disseminate them to others.
Having wrongly assumed there would be an upgrade or migration path from 0.9x, I was also frustrated by that. It seems there is still no such migration system.
At the same time, the rise of the usual fan cult responding to criticism and noob questions poorly was perhaps extra annoying, given all these other things.
I was also concerned about what would come from the lack of clear version notes and changelogs plus the apparent separation of developers from general users before the general user base had a chance to cohere as its own community necessarily interacting with devs.
* * * So I figured wait a few months, see if Elgg fails or grows. * * *
1.2 came out fairly soon, and next time I looked there were lots of templates, plugins, and an active community site. Excellent!
Well now I see the community site is broken, none of the alternate logins work, and if you forget your username you are SOL. When I got in, I found a bad search facility, generally difficult navigation of groups and discussions, and seemingly the loss of ability to post and start groups. This is not what I recall last time I looked at the new community site.
Am I to understand now that the main problem has been trolling and flaming over the Elgg team’s true intentions relative to fees and copyrights they may or may not be trying to slip in at some point?
It reminds me of the early days of Joomla too.
Except, in this case, we are dealing with commercially backed FOSS which does indeed garner and deserve some suspicion as to how long it will be providing FOSS releases of its product.
There is no reason to get hysterical about fork talk. Forks either take off and are valuable to everyone, or they do not take off and are valuable for a time to smaller audiences, or they just go away and nobody cares.
A successful fork of Elgg would likely hurt Elgg/Curverider as a commercial venture, but that threat is good for them and the much larger open source community. It should motivate them to produce quality and maintain credibility. If they can’t, let the chips fall where they may.
For a commercially backed FOSS product which has and may wish to have more investors, image means a lot. I wonder why they have failed so miserably in this department.
The Elgg team should be able to police its large community sites and knock off abuse. If that has not happened without basic features getting shut off or broken, without the air of lost credibility and trust, then they had best bust their butts and address their lack of moderation features and/or diligent, effective human moderators, or both.
In the end, all I care about, and all most people care about is whether the product works well and will not be abandoned. All the noise is making it really hard to assess those things.
*”largely unsuited for popular adoption”–core package with some stock templates, solid tutorials and docs, a real forum, and maybe a wiki. Also the 1.0 installer and .htaccess settings + lack of documentation set up a lot of shared server woes for novice to intermediate users of mysql/php applications.
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Interestingly, Dave has also chosen to overwrite blog posts after refusing to admit something as trivial as a broken link in a posting. Get a life, Dave – you made a tiny mistake, someone tried to help, and you took it as a personal affront! Pity the poor fools who are financing the next round at Elgg.
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