Community and *.tiki.org site organization

Posted by Pat VDV 10 Sep 2003 08:59 GMT-0000 posts: 224 ☆ ☆ ☆

Not about idea Jeremy, I would be in favour of this. What do you think Mose?

Regards,

Pat.

Posted by Mose 12 Sep 2003 23:11 GMT-0000 posts: 111 ☆ ☆ ☆

I think that support is not here. tikiwiki.org is a collaborative website for developpers. As it's an open community anyone can participate. But you won't find professional support here. Support is what make skilled people live with free software. They sell support. Check FindTikiExpert ...

Anyway, one can find a friendly contact with skilled people anywhere, and find a way to get a free help. But it's a social thing you have to deal interactively with individuals, either here on forums or on irc.

well, that's how I feel things, but some other opinions would be welcome.

mose

Posted by Jeremy Butler 14 Sep 2003 13:47 GMT-0000 posts: 32 ☆ ☆ ☆

I think we may be talking about the same thing, mose, but giving it different names.

By a "support" section, I don't mean to suggest that users should expect professional-quality, on-demand support. No user should come to tw.o and demand an answer to a support question — as if the Tiki community owed him/her something.

Instead, support should be a collaborative thing — with users helping each other out and developers contributing as they have time. I'd suggest that tw.o could be a very valuable tool to help build a support community such as that.

Further, if you look at the Websites for competing open-source projects such as PostNuke or phpBB, you'll find support communities are encouraged and prominently displayed.

Do most people view tw.o as solely a "collaborative website for developers"? This worries me as I've spent a bit of time contributing to the TikiWiki project by writing documentation on tw.o. I wrote it assuming that it'd be used by admins and end-users, but not really by developers.

Please let me know if my efforts have been misguided.

Regards,

Jeremy

Posted by Mose 14 Sep 2003 16:59 GMT-0000 posts: 111 ☆ ☆ ☆

> jbutler:
> I think we may be talking about the same thing, mose, but giving it different names.
>
> By a "support" section, I don't mean to suggest that users should expect professional-quality, on-demand support. No user should come to tw.o and demand an answer to a support question — as if the Tiki community owed him/her something.

- people do that. They jump in and require support. They don't say hello, they just ask for an help and sometimes in caps. They send me private message requiring I handle their case because they don't know much coding and their problem is bigger than everything else. That's why using a confusing word like "support" is dangerous imho.

>
> Instead, support should be a collaborative thing — with users helping each other out and developers contributing as they have time. I'd suggest that tw.o could be a very valuable tool to help build a support community such as that.

- That is not support, I call it solidarity, friendliness and mutual help. It's not a one-way thing.

>
> Further, if you look at the Websites for competing open-source projects such as PostNuke or phpBB, you'll find support communities are encouraged and prominently displayed.

- they just are conformist to what is visible in the business world. Support has been the reason of split in *nukes because some people wanted to sell it afterwise. Now check support in http://support.postnuke.com and well, it's not there that flows pass, I guess 😉

> Do most people view tw.o as solely a "collaborative website for developers"? This worries me as I've spent a bit of time contributing to the TikiWiki project by writing documentation on tw.o. I wrote it assuming that it'd be used by admins and end-users, but not really by developers.

- well, tw.o is run by developers that share their time and skills together for the benefit of the community. But there is no usage boundary. Rights are open, there is no strong rules nor punishment for misbehaviour. Actually the term developper, like that "support" word, lead to misunderstanding. Half the tiki developpers are skilled people of any sort and don't do much coding. Contributor is more appropriated.

tw.o is dedicated to the tikiwiki community that is composed by contributors of any sort. But we can't claim it's aimed at end-users, specifically. It's aimed at end-user-actor that don't come here only as a user claiming support and help, but also interact with any valuable content, ideas or just a quote. Do you see what I mean ?

>
> Please let me know if my efforts have been misguided.

- they have not be 😊

Actually there is a duplication preparing in websites : we should have a website with sorted information, more official, because tw.o is too rich with miscellaneous different information it blurs the use we can have as a documentation.

Another site will be setup soon with a more organized content, dedicated essentially to documentation and a more synthetic presentation of tikiwiki. The development website will then can remain low in rules enforcement and rich in content, using the object sending feature to migrate final content from dev site to doc site.

I hope you'll continue doing that great job you do in that area, it will be much easier to perform there, I think. What do you think about it ?

regards,
mose

Posted by Jeremy Butler 14 Sep 2003 20:29 GMT-0000 posts: 32 ☆ ☆ ☆

> mose:
> > jbutler:
> > Instead, support should be a collaborative thing — with users helping each other out and developers contributing as they have time. I'd suggest that tw.o could be a very valuable tool to help build a support community such as that.
>
> - That is not support, I call it solidarity, friendliness and mutual help. It's not a one-way thing.
>

I’m all for solidarity, friendliness and mutual help! ❗

Perhaps, then, if the label support implies users-ask/developers-respond we could find another label for a, shall we say, help community center. For example, phpBB’s support section has this preface:

“Having installation problems? Is the database giving you trouble? Can't seem to login? Have a question about how to use the product? Then check out the phpBB community forums where you can post your questions and find answers to almost everything!???

The phpBB developers aren't promising that they'll help users, but they are offering a space for users to help each other. Wouldn’t such a preface also be appropriate for tw.o’s forums?

In addition, phpBB offers a FAQ. And it seems to me that Tiki’s FAQ-building module makes this sort of service pretty painless. Indeed, I notice that the Tiki Install FAQ has had over 2,400 visits. Clearly, it’s a popular item!

> tw.o is dedicated to the tikiwiki community that is composed by contributors of any sort. But we can't claim it's aimed at end-users, specifically. It's aimed at end-user-actor that don't come here only as a user claiming support and help, but also interact with any valuable content, ideas or just a quote. Do you see what I mean ?
>

That seems perfectly reasonable to me. The notion of an end-user-actor is one of the foundations of open-source software.

> Another site will be setup soon with a more organized content, dedicated essentially to documentation and a more synthetic presentation of tikiwiki. The development website will then can remain low in rules enforcement and rich in content, using the object sending feature to migrate final content from dev site to doc site.
>
> I hope you'll continue doing that great job you do in that area, it will be much easier to perform there, I think. What do you think about it ?
>

I’ll be curious to see how this works out. It does seem like a separate section of tw.o that is devoted to documentation development would be useful. And I’ll continue to do my small part working on that documentation.

And you can call me stubborn 😉, but I still think a support section –- regardless of what it’s labeled –- would be a great idea!

Thanks for all your good work on tw and tw.o!

Jeremy

Posted by Pat VDV 24 Sep 2003 21:40 GMT-0000 posts: 224 ☆ ☆ ☆

Interesting discussion and news 😊 I am curious to see the new site Mose. I too have been receiving private messages with cries for help but I try redirecting people to these forums. As limited as they are, they potentially grow into something 'big', whether users/developers/contributors all help each other out. I do not like it either when people demand or just bluntly expect help, that's why I don't lile people 'shouting' support questions in the shoutbox. At least in the forums you have a chance to think about it when trying to help. In the end if I have time and if I have some idea about the topic I will try to help.

Regards,

Pat.