herko, though i disagree with you on almost every point i greatly enjoy your comments and everything you say in this post we should all take seriously. instead of getting a bit lost in many details (and not having the time at the moment to get into it, i'm at work) here are the general guiding principals i wish XOOPS focused on:

transparency. do nothing in private. nothing!

democracy. all community members have a say, though we should listen to those with the most merit, of course.

our sourceforge site should be the focus. all other sites are merely it's children. the sourceforge site is a mess (as are it's children) and need attention. devs are not utilizing it properly to invite cooperation.

there are two names at the top and they appear to need administrative assistance. so i am offering it. maybe another would be better, if so, choose him (her, them) and let's get working.

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Eric, I appreciate the offer you're making (and I'm definately not trying to dissuade you!), and also appreciate this discussion.

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I'm all for transparency, but some things need to be prepared behind closed doors. Heh, if you're married, you'll understand
Seriously tho: it is a proven fact that where there's different interests that need to come together, there needs to be compromise. And where there's comprmise, there is negotiations. Ask anyone, but public transparent negotiations don't work.
I'm all for transparency, and propose this guiding principle:
in public, unless there are good reasons not to do it in public. And make those reasons public, so people understand.

Quote:If this is to be the case, then how do we decide who are members of the community? Everyone? Only english speaking members? Registered members? Known users? People who contributed? People who asked only one question? Former users?
I think you'll soon find this doesn't add much value to the process you're trying to set up.
In fact, I think that NO LEADERSHIP for the community is MUCH more powerful then having a democratic/meritocratic system put in place to emulate a non-existant reality. Without leadership, everyone is a leader, in this community. How's that for 'Powered by you!'.

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The sf.net site is a mess? Hmm.. it's the developers workspace, nothing more. So yes, core development should be focussed on the sf.net site. But the rest shouldn't be there. It'll distract from the development.

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Read the previous posts: these are the core development leads. Not the XOOPS community leaders, or the overall project managers. Well, they *should* have been, but obviously haven't been.

Herko

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i disagree with "do nothing in private. nothing!" there are still certain management discussions etc that regular members don't need to see!! and please don't tell me that all other open source projects do NOT have private forums or discussions, because i know different. there are numerous reasons and not because something sinister is being discussed in secret!

if we open up all the private forums here on xoops.org you'll see 1 thing happen, that 1 thing will be that discussions will cease and the management teams or moderators etc will begin to discuss things somewhere else either on messenger or another private mailing list.

the transparency comes down to users being able to openly read about relevant issues & development processes that members take an interest in, things like on sf.net with the development discussions which as stated is not being fully utilised. This situation however is going to change and i know that for a fact.

as for democracy.. pffft democracy only works a majority of the time, but with democracy most of the time all you get is people debating things and nothing ever gets done. if the goals and product objectives are proposed and people are working unquestionably to achieve the set goals and direction then a lot of the democratic process that you propose will not be necessary anyway because the project will be moving forward constantly.

as said in the google video, once the goals and direction is set, it's that direction that is being worked to, and i'm sure the devs who are working to achieve those goals will not welcome someone popping up and saying, you need to do this, that and change this and that in order to change the direction that the devs ultimately want to go.


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as the WOX newsletter writer, i can give you that information (but it will just be my opinion),

when we 1st started the news team etc, we all had great ideas on what and how we should produce it, unfortunately non of us were expert journalists or editors. that's not an excuse though but it is relevant. News was coming in fast but was posted to the news items, the team was not very large either, and we were faced with a problem of finding news, editing articles, waiting for information to arrive, and then putting these news items into news releases. when we 1st started we had a lot more time. as the months progressed, 2 people (1 of them myself) became ill, then I had an increased workload in order to pay bills, some of the workload i had was too much (and i'm not talking about XOOPS workload, i'm talking about workload to bring in my paycheck), i worked self employed status, and quite often i took too much work on, then i moved house and was offline for 3 months. then i took on more roles helping with developments of modules at smartfactory, aswell as helping other members here with other tasks that do need higher priority (in my opinion). so yes, if you want to blame anybody for the lack of WOX newsletters, then i'm the 1 to blame, most of the teams personal circumstances changed a lot last year, and some are still changing still.

WOX newsletters are a good thing for xoops, i don't disagree with that at all, But I've read that Ladysham has offered to restart the newsletters, If she still wants to do this then I will gladly hand over the responsibility of producing the newsletter to her. I am working on a number of different tasks with xoops, so the position is open.

as for a few of the other suggestions in this thread, let me say that some of the things you are proposing have already been discussed and some of those changes WILL happen, i did say that there is MORE news to come from skalpa with regards to the communities requests and concerns, and indeed there will be.

but all these topics certainly aren't helping speed things up simply because of the fact that there are too many ideas etc, it's like information overload!! slow down have a breather, and take things step by step. The core devs are listening and are making proposals which will be released soon.

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there is nothing of serious enough importance that has to be discussed in private concerning XOOPS. this isn't your wife's thing showing on an elevator or n-bombs in Iran. there's no valid reason for any XOOPS related discussion to not at least be read only. i totally disagree with you. i speak openly and not worse off in life.

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that doesn't tell us anything. who's listening? what proposals? where are they talking about this? what is the timeline? these are not difficult questions.

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The fact that you haven't seen those discussions, doesn't mean they haven't been there This is exactly the point in case. In my personal experience, there are valid reasons why some discussions should be held in private. The ability to think aloud, and disagree i private, to brainstorm without holding back, to negotiate. To prepare and plan, to work on drafts, to discuss propositions and proposals. In all of these there can be valid reasons to hold them in private.

Ignoring them and holding to the principle of 'everythigng public' isn't constructive debate. Giving valid and motivated arguments that oppose them is.

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Please, read the posts made here. If you don't know what is going on where, you will have to look. The sf.net forums are the place where this is being discussed. In recent days, more actively, thanks to the efforts of some developers.

And you ask for a timeline. This is exactly why some discussions shouldn't be in the spotlight of the public eye. To use an analogy: the developers are discussing a concept car design, getting down to the main principles and architecture. And here *you* ask when you can buy it. That's totally out of the scope of current development.
Besides, if you as project lead can find a way to manage the common pool resources to develop the XOOPS core to the highest possible standards (the same goal the current developers have), with the volunteer work being done, you'll get everyone's full support. But asking for a timeline in this stage of development with such a low availability of the resource pool, is totally besides the point.

Herko

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That's a good argument for public discussions.

I'd be willing to help out with core development, and probably others would too.

But with no public information about the development plan, that's impossible.

I am going to kick myself for this but...

Why is it, again, the only person not speaking about the issues critical to his project is the lead programmer???

Is this a time for silence?

Herko:
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i do not believe what u have just said is accurrate. can u provide a link? the last post i see there is in the thread i started. unless of course your talking about some secret discussion again...

Eric I think that you show us your power to persist.

But I think that there are enough reasons given by people that have experience with this points. So if you talk about democracy I think the votes have been counted .

I will go with the point of view from Herko and some others. Work has to be done. But community en core development are different things.

rabideau, I agree we did not heared anything but as mentioned before there will be news in a period of time. And while great news is prommised I think we should be patient. Wat will do a few more days

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ha. i'm a fighter. it's just how i think.

no matter what happens, i think this thread and the many perspectives expressed are worthwhile.