[wp-hackers] Splintering the Community

[Jacob Santos]

I decided to run this through a BS filter and this is the result.


> The hesitance is most assuredly not a case of NIH (Not Invented Here)
> syndrome. Our goal should be to create sustainable communications
> tools for the WordPress community. A third party site, running on
> proprietary software does not meet our needs.
>
>
BS filter: "I'm going to say we don't want NIH, and then explain one of the
motivations behind majority of people doing NIH."

 I like Stack Overflow.
>
>
BS Filter: "Stack Overflow has something NOW that people can use and if
WordPress.org created something it would take 2 years and function terribly,
but it'll look cool and be super easy (partly because it'll have 1% of the
functionality)."


> I've found it useful at times. But that's today. We're trying to
> create a sustainable community around our sustainable web publishing
> platform. We have to think about the future.
>
>
BS Filter: "2 years from now, our solution will be awesome... ish. We want
to stomp out competition before majority of people realize how great it is
NOW. Look at bbPress, ever since people realized that it doesn't compete
with phpBB or one of the 1000s of forums out there, we'd be screwed."


>
> I don't object to use of Stack Overflow as an experiment, to see how
> useful such a question/answer voting site is to WordPress users.
>
>
BS Filter: "But I really, really do... object I mean."


> You
> certainly don't need any "official" blessing to explore that on your
> own. But those experiments and their discussion should be in the
> context of providing better sustainable communications tools for
> WordPress.org that run on WordPress.org.
>
>
BS Filter: "We at wordpress.org don't care about you coming in here and
telling people about the nice bar at the other end of this here city. So why
don't you move it to some other area where people won't be able to hear
about your idea and so that it'd fail from lack of interest or coverage."


>  Conversations will happen
> where they happen.
>
>
"We can't actually control this mailing list. Well we could, but that would
make us evil. We like to publicly destroy conversations because it beats
kicking LOLcats."


> But we're in trouble if people
> in the community start leading little splinter groups away for one of
> the core communications functions of WordPress.org: offering a place
> for general user support.
>
>
"Well, look at Habari, except they're not really relevant. What I'm trying
to say is that sure, you can spend that time, but you'll fail, because no
one will care unless it is from wordpress.org. Actually, splintering on such
a large project isn't so much a problem for us as it a problem for the group
attempting to do the splintering. Face it, once WordPress.org has its Q/A,
we'll crush you and all that time would be for not."


> Rest assured, the core team is well aware that there are ways in which
> WordPress.org is falling short. We're even considering "taking a
> release off" to work on WordPress.org, among other things.
>
>
1. WordPress.org could be open for everyone to improve.
2. bbPress isn't all that great and a better forum could be used.

Jacob Santos