whats the difference if theyre called official modules or not? mknow isnt templated and doesnt really tie in to the dragonfly admin system, and cpgnucalendar is based off another calendar, the official calendar would be akamus

The difference is ofcourse maximising the amount of really good modules which people can trust. If I was new I'd sure as hell download the OFFICIAL Modules for my site instead of running all around the web trying to find them.

Secondly it would mean that the module writers would post updates and information HERE, thus keeping the community at large informed (and Absense of Information has been one of the highlights of this discussion).

Mark has offered to make the Module dedicated to Dragonfly and I am positive that he will do what needs to be done to have it easier integrated into the CMS than before (when he has taken pains to make it Cross-Nuke compatible).

Sorry to say I see no Official Calendar, but I did see a guy called Khenn making (writing?) an open and free Calendar fast as hell which is available right now for all members. Where is the official calendar? Who has it? (A selected few...) Not me.

Mystic wrote:

MrPotatoes wrote: lastly, Mystic, the fact that there has to be another website to get anything done or just that concept is sad to me Agreed, but desperate times call for desperate measures... Why do you think many projects fork in the first place? Why did CPG fork from PHPNuke?

My point eaxctly Mystic.

djdevon3 wrote:

I will agree that the way things are organized right now isn't the best way.

Nothing is ever perfect.

djdevon3 wrote:

This is a 6 page thread that basically details the outcry for members to organize THEMSELVES but more importantly is that staff supports it by creating groups and avenues to allow it to happen. Module Creation Group Porting Group Tutorial Group Forum Mods Group

Would this be in addition to the groups such as the documentors who don't document, the theme designers who have yet to release a theme or fix the existing ones, the debuggers who have no code to debug? Or are these new groups supposed to be replacements for the existing ones?

djdevon3 wrote:

These are just examples I've come up with and ones that could make a very positive impact around here and for the good of Dragonfly.

Possibly, or it could be more of the same.

djdevon3 wrote:

Why staff hasn't absolutely jumped at the chance to let members organize themselves baffles me.

There are so many people on staff who have provided little to nothing. Look in the groups and tell me when some of those people did what their title implies. I can certainly name names if desired.

djdevon3 wrote:

By allowing user groups to flourish it will take a load off of the current staff so they can concentrate on more imporant issues; than posts like these...which have been going on since I've been here.

Again there is nothing stopping people from helping now. The problem seems to be peoples egotistical need for some sort of official title. Screw the damn titles and groups and just do some work. People need to stop saying we are going, wanna, can and they need to just do it.

djdevon3 wrote:

We all love Dragonfly and want to see it become the ultimate cms that we know it can be. All we are asking for is the opportunity to form groups to specialize. If there were people that wanted to specialize in creating a better blog give them their own group and let them run with it.

Again why does someone need a title? Can no one work without their ego being stroked first?

djdevon3 wrote:

By not allowing people to organize themselves this site is actually hindering Dragonfly's progress in a way. By forcing people to seek out other sites like themefads, dfmods, etc.. you are scattering a workforce that could be all inclusive to Dragonfly. That means faster support, easier to find specialized Q&A, etc..

No one has ever said "you can't work on this" The fact is people are free to work on anything they wish. Apparently without the title thats impossible

djdevon3 wrote:

The people want to help, give them the way to do so by providing groups, forums, and cvs access if requested.

The current groups all have their own forums. As you yourself know damn well, upon request you can have cvs space, so why you even mantion that is beyond me, unless your trying to mislead people.

djdevon3 wrote:

Who cares if they are skilled enough or not. If they are passionate they will gain the knowledge and find a way to make it work.

Excuse me I sure as hell care, as you should as well, unless the goal becomes to be like phpnuke where as long as it works (mostly) its good enough. Most of us here came to DF to get away from the security issues inherent in poorly designed blocks, modules and hacks.

Andreas Regarding my Calendar it can be found here and questions/support can be found here and here for this group and this group

NEMINI

So I am supposed to look in a Forum only people personally added by you can see? Sounds... great? No Download, no open Forums, no nothing. Sorry to be an ass - but that equals NO Calendar too.

But OK, if we are going to solve organisational and structural issues by bitching about titles and how everything is already in place, great! When a member suggests organizing things and even manages to drum up support from mod-writers and other contributors it's all suddenly a free-for-all brawl?

NEMINI - what do you care if someone needs their ego stroked to do something? If it means nothing gets done, then fine - stroke those egos. If NOT, then the person gets his fancy title kicked and his ego gets a spanking. SO WHAT? But I am sure that any kind of motivational behavior is somewhere contrary to the idea of actually doing something, huh?

So, to sum this thread up in a couple of short words: People want to help. Staff feels threatened. Egos need stroking. Everyone bitches (including me). Nothing gets done. Voila.

I've had it with actually trying to do something creative. I might not be able to code, port or make nice and shiny images - but atleast I TRIED helping the community by providing organisation, which seems frowned upon. So, the "WHY NOT HELP?" motto just got rained on and the "rained-on-person" doesn't want to get rained at any more. It rains enough already.

awww...

the only reason why i dont offer to help for real is because, i can only get stuck into coding on the weekends, and even then it'd only be every other weekend (ie i won't get much done).

I think that this thread isn't really all that important. The sticky that it caused seems to be a lot more productive. Just so long as it helps workers co-ordinate thats all that matters. I don't think that anyone needs somekind of title, just volunteer to write a few lines of code here and there and post about it so that people know what you're doing and can use it themselves etc.

It's that simple. I already done something like this with the news module (made a lot more of index.php's string constants use single quotes instead of double quotes for speed, added a whole bunch of extra variables for themers that want to split up the group of links down the bottom (read more, print, comments etc), and added an entirely new link that takes you to the admin page with the parent article open for editing, just like what puke did. I missed that. It was quick and easy and nows its back.)

I have also tested it on my server and its all good and seems to work perfectly. I commented it pretty well i think, but i didn't even submit to try to get it in cvs per-se, because i wasn't sure if this is what the devs would've wanted and all that.

But you don't see me asking for some kind of badge before i commit myself. I agree with what NEMINI says, but i do of course appreciate anyone that tries to help at all. Helping is nice. But rewritting core files isn't the only way to help.

My calendar module is for those who help... ie staff and supporters which are both groups you can join.

I dont see how you can say we've turned down help

i can agree with Nemini and Devon here. they are all valid points. people that are supposed to help but havent. people taht really want to help but havent. it happens

i say that there can be some extra forums for yet another group. it's just a secondary group here that just tries to ad modules, fixes, security stuff, WHATEVER. and then once things are done then they can be reviewed. which we all know can take awhile but if it happens then AWESOME!

honestly i just wanna help on that Wiki and FAQ and Tutorials because i feel that it is lacking. i can pump out a doucment in my spare time in a matter of hours. i do so much ocmputer and web work on my own that it wouldn't hurt anything else that i do anyway.

think about it, you have more people you have a higer chance of getting stuff done. i'm not saying a better chance but a higher chance. and there are people here that are willing to do things

Everyone participating in this thread have many valid points. Let's now take that energy, tone down the blame, and fire up the creative juices.

The new thread started by DJMaze is a great move forward from what has been brought up here.

The last thing I want to see are people attacking ideas and each other. Go to your corners, keep it clean, and come out energized for the success of Dragonfly.

Look at every post you're about to write and keep it positive. If someone says something negative, just ignore them and move along.

From what I can tell the talent is here, let's all put differences aside for the betterment of Dragonfly and work together.

Andreas, I know it's frustrating at times, but I want to thank you for getting this going and caring enough to do so. Don't give up on us so soon. I think it's a lofty goal, but a goal worth fighting for and enduring some obstacles.

I believe in this CMS, or trust me I would have been gone a long time ago. You all have different opinions, but that's what makes you all a valuable asset to the community. If we were all the same this CMS would be pretty lifeless.

Let's agree to disagree at times, and stay focused on the end result. The best dang CMS around!

<climbing off soapbox>

I can easily agree with devon or nemini on many of the points, one way or another its all the same thing.

What I'd like to point out is what it really comes down to. Lack of access.

As nemini pointed out, cvs access has been offered to people that want it for projects.

HOWEVER, even as staff I asked many times to have CVS access given to the Design Team, and it never was. It's really hard to have an open source project working when its NOT open.

Too few people can actually contribute without having to give it to someone else before hand. Not only is this counter productive, but even if it would normaly work the people that you need to convince to get things commited are not around 24/7

I personaly don't care about titles or groups, if you want something done, you do it. However even if I found bugs and fixed them, I have no way to get them into use without first contacting a developer and waiting for them to have time to do something about it.


Over all the problem lays with the fact that no matter how many groups you have, who leads or doesnt lead, it all comes back to the fact that it has to go through the same VERY few people before it's put to use in any way. These are the same very few people that don't have the time to manage their own work, let alone take care of the mass of input that could come streaming in from the nice group of people i this thread alone.

Every other open source project that I've been involved with has:
a real Wiki (open to everyone for submission/edits)
CVS for everyone, some are limited to staff, but ALL staff has access and can fix ANYTHING at any given time.

Yeah I know, having it actually be OPEN brings up the problem of trusting the staff with proper bug fixes and not adding anything malicious....but if you can't trust atleast your staff that far, they shouldn't be staff at all.

If this project continues to be funneled through the same 2 or 3 people (who are busy 95% of the time) it will never grow any larger, and will be forgotten and die. I don't mean to offend anyone but the simple fact is that most the staff are staff for their ego, not for the community or the project, and I include everyone in this, developers and admins are not exempt. They know who they are.

I've personaly been approached by no less than 5 different groups starting forks and branches and wanting me for a developer, or debugger, or a project leader.

I've turned down all those offers and requests because I want to see THIS project succeed. The longer people think about themselves and what their titles are, or who did what, or who controls what who where when and why... you're only making things worse by not letting the community develop THEIR community.

EDIT I'd also like to point out that no one can volunteer to be staff since the current rules say "If you ask you will be denied for a year" or something equaly stupid.
If you don't let people join the project, they won't try.

akamu wrote:

My calendar module is for those who help... ie staff and supporters which are both groups you can join.

Yes - we recently heard about how easy it was to join the Staff ("Ask and you won't be in Staff for a year"). Sorry to say but you are advocating a paid-for module (even if its donating to a worthy cause) as the Official Module, and that seems contrary to me. We have a perfectly usable and bug-fixed FREE Calendar and then we have the DonatorWare Calendar.

But who cares anymore - it seems that my ideas have atleast given fruit in the form of somewhere people can volunteer to help out.

After looking around a bit I was unable to find the reference for the 'ask and be denied' thing, seems someone removed it recently...

However it still stands that it's not easy to become staff. Most the groups don't allow you to join, you have to be invited. The one exception I saw was the debuggers group, which I applied for twice, at two different times, waited about 3 weeks and nothing ever happened.

I know people can get busy, but that's pushing it.

And maybe I'm full of myself, but I feel I'm more than qualified for that particular group so I doubt I was turned down. I was simply ignored.

so let me try and sum up these last few posts ...

You want it so anyone can become staff and you want it so all staff have full cvs access?

Do I even need to explain why that is an absolutely terrible thing? You can have one or the other, but definately not both. If CVS is open to all staff then all staff need to be highly qualified. If staff is open to anyone then CVS must be restricted to those who know what they are doing and can do it properly.

It really is that simple. This project is as open source and any other. Open source simply means the source code is available to anyone who wants it. It doesn't mean anyone can grab whatever title they desire, it doesn't mean joe blow off the street can post his first post today and be lead developer tomorrow. Do you think the mozilla foundation will just let you start making commits to the firefox core if you ask? Please go ahead and try, but I suggest you get your resume up to speed.

The best way to get on staff is lead by example. Most staff are given small job until they prove they can handle them. Unfortunately most prove incapable. Trevor didn't start as a developer, he worked his way up to it.

I suppose I should have been more specific.

You're right, not everyone should have CVS access and not everyone should be staff.

However the way it's done is lacking considerably.

Obviously the 'leaders' don't have the time to read everything on the forums and find out who is qualified "by example" so the groups should be open to people that want to be staff and the proper people can then research whether or not said person is worthy.

However this comes back to what I said about applying as a debugger to start at the bottom so to speak...

I know I can do atleast that much, and my 400 odd some posts helping others with code should be a fairly good reference, ontop of my actual code contributions in the form of modules and blocks.

My main point was that even someone that is proven, and known in the community, AND was staff already.... I still couldn't get into the group where I wanted to be.

As far as the CVS access goes... I, as one of the only active members of the Design Team (which isn't large to begin with) couldn't even get CVS access to work on the much needed theme for this site.