Changes in Elgg’s support

January 7, 2009 in Elgg, Social Networking, Technology, open source | 8 comments

The Elgg support community’s access to content has gradually been restored after  large portions of the community site were closed or disabled apparently because of attacks on the core developers. The Elgg Google groups were unaffected other than becoming much busier.

Around the turn of the year, developer Dave Tosh created a group with the intent of discussing improvements to the Elgg community site for developers and end users. The most interesting discussion occurred in the Welcome post.. Subsequently, Dave Tosh has outlined changes to Elgg support:

We have decided to go for a top level elgg.org documentation area that is powered by Mediawiki. This is similar to many open source projects and therefore makes sense as developers are used to it.

At the moment, I am not sure how this is a change. Curverider has used MediaWiki as a vehicle for documentation since the release of Elgg 1.0. MediaWiki has been skinned to look and feel like the rest of the Elgg site which adds unity. Other than that there have been little. Community members still cannot change or add content to the wiki as I am accustomed to in other open source projects.

Groups have been refactored to improve the layout and highlight key groups. I think it is worth sticking with groups for discussion and where there are shortcomings, address them. We have restricted the creation of new groups, but existing groups are still active and owners can now decide if they want forums, page and files as all are optional.

These are positive changes. Highlighting important groups will draw users to where they need to go. It will also discourage the duplication of what is already present. Restricting group creation is also a good idea. This is very similar to how discussion forums operate—the administrator controls the organization of the site. Users generally cannot create a forum.

Integrated google search. We took our cue from WordPress on this one. Using Google search was the fastest way to get integrated search across the three open source tools we use on the elgg.org site (Mediawiki, Elgg and Trac).

The search function in Elgg has been a serious limitation. An integrated search using Google is a great help. I think it might even be better if it searched the Elgg Goggle Groups as well. I also look forward to seeing this as a plugin.

Plugin authors can now decide if they are going to allow comments on their plugins and shortly there will be basic version control which should help make it easier to follow plugin development.

This appears to have been implemented. Plugin authors can now choose to replace older versions when they upload newer versions. Again, this is a positive development. I wonder though, if some implementation could be created that allow users to keep older version available as they may be compatible with older versions of Elgg. [Edit: Cash Costello reports that this is the case.]

An open source project becomes a diverse community of developers and users with vastly different interests and needs. People have varying abilities and skills.  I believe that many constituents may be best served by employing a bottoms up model in which they can become active contributors to a knowledge base. Both FaceBook and WordPress allow individuals to create accounts and edit content on their MediaWiki documentation.

I appreciate Curverider’s moves to improve support for the Elgg community. We are all indebted to the developers (core and otherwise) for all their hard work in making Elgg what it is and sharing it with the world. An open repository for shared knowledge would would enhance Elgg’s success. I’ve enjoyed working with Elgg and look forward to working with it to put together a great K12 social networking platform.

I invite your thoughts on the matter.

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  1. Phil’s avatar

    Phil on January 7, 2009 at 5:42 pm

    I think it looks good and the changes are positive.
    But it’s too early to say whether it will need much tweeking.
    I’m delighted though that things are moving forward in a good way providing more scope for interaction.
    I hope that plugin development gathers pace again now.

    I’m still wondering why some plugins that were available in the google group weren’t left there or released at the .org site.
    It does seem that dave & co are very reluctant to give up any stewardship to others and I find it hard to imagine how, as the project gathers followers again, the new structure will cope. Where will all the trivial enquiries go. Inmy head I see a big road sign with arrows on it showing very clear directions for people with specific areas to move to.
    Are the new areas to which people will be inclined to go responsive enough. Because you know what it’s like, people will want a response.
    I hope plugin developers don’t get too much flack because they’ll then discourage feedback.
    Perhaps I’m overthinking it here, I’m happy to sit and see how it goes anyway.

    Phil

    Reply

  2. Matt Edminster’s avatar

    Matt Edminster on January 8, 2009 at 12:35 am

    Steve, I agree that Elgg could benefit from the additions of qualified and constructive contributors. But things could also get sloppy and sour if the wrong people started making additions and/or edits. How have WP and FB embraced the good and avoided the bad?

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    1. Steve’s avatar

      Steve on January 8, 2009 at 6:46 pm

      My experience has been that wikis have a way of working with some tending. People who make contributions watch their pages because they want to protect their contribution against vandalism. They also want to know what others might contribute on a topic that is important to them.

      Both FB or WP require registration to make edits. The main pages are often locked. I have seen similar implementations elsewhere.

      Reply

  3. Matt Leifer’s avatar

    Matt Leifer on January 8, 2009 at 8:23 am

    This is great news. The changes all seem positive and I’m particularly happy to hear about version control on plugins, even if it is very basic.

    However, I agree with the criticism about the Elgg developers not relinquishing enough control. The documentation would probably vastly improve if anyone, or at least registered users, could make edits. Maybe the developers are worried about having to constantly monitor the wiki for accuracy, but most wikis are self policing, i.e. people who care about the individual pages check them regularly. It’s possible that the Elgg community is not large enough yet for this to work properly, but I think it’s worth the experiment.

    On the same theme, I think the pace of development would be greatly increased if there were a better mechanism to submit patches to the core, rather than having the Curverider folks take sole responsibility for them. People will work on the bugs and features that they care about and the communities priorities might not completely match Curverider’s priorities. Not having this defeats much of the purpose of Open Source. Similar functionality is needed for plugins. I may not care to revisit a plugin that I wrote if it works on my site, but I certainly want others to be able to improve it without having to fork the code.

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    1. Steve’s avatar

      Steve on January 8, 2009 at 4:11 pm

      Matt–

      You do parse well! You have replied with some of what I included in a draft, but edited or softened! Two points in particular: Elgg would be best served by the core devs relinquishing some control of some aspects of this project. Secondly, Curverider’s priorities and those of the the community are not identical. It would be best to harness this.

      As one who has written a few simple plugins, I agree with your final point. In the spirit of open source, I’d rather the community feel ownership of the plugin.

      Reply

      1. Tradenet’s avatar

        Tradenet on January 10, 2009 at 10:08 am

        Frankly, I really like the Drupal model as an example of this. It seems to be working.

        Reply

  4. Cash’s avatar

    Cash on January 8, 2009 at 9:42 am

    When a newer version of a plugin is uploaded, the older one remains available but doesn’t show up on the list of plugins. There is a link to previous versions on the newest upload.

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    1. Tradenet’s avatar

      Tradenet on January 8, 2009 at 1:11 pm

      I agree that whole plugin repository is a mess. You got a bunch of new and outdated stuff in there. It really needs some organization. This is where you are going to get most of the “complaints” from.

      Reply