On Feb 9, 11:01 am, Scott Merrill <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I think I'd focus on the Habari commitment to improve the craft of
> blogging.

In particular for a WordCamp event, it might but of interest to
indicate those features in Habari that (although maybe nobody has said
it explicitly) have influenced WordPress development for the better,
or issues with WordPress that have increased our level of attention to
those facets of Habari.

Such instances include:
* The administrative interface - This meshes nicely with Scott's
thought of how we've striven to keep the interface simple.  As one
example in specific, we've tried to address the UI menu clutter
created by WP plugins, by housing plugin UI in a specific place and
making those long pages filterable using the filter box.  Whether WP
has achieved this clarity even after two UI revisions, who can say?
But it's my opinion that the continued revisions are at least partly
driven by seeing what we're doing right.

* Media management - WP's media mangement is questionable, wherein it
manages non-blog content using attachment post records.  The silo
extensibility encourages connection to 3rd party services that are
better at providing those features.

There are of course many things of this type that won't make a bit of
difference to end users, but might be worthwhile to list briefly for
the benefit of the coders present: Object-oriented, organized code.
Database independence and prepared statements.  Documented source
commits as a requirement.  Potential for multiple theme engines.
Multisite built-in.  Sanctity of user vs system code directories
during upgrades.  Flexibility of templating and URL rewrting.  Plugin-
created content types.  Standardized forms handling via FormUI.

As Chris points out, the community aspects of our project are
compelling.  I think that most users find this out just by coming near
the project for the first time.  For people who haven't had a long-
time voice in the WordPress community, or who are just getting
started, it's tough to find hands-on help and really tough to catalyze
change in the establishment.  It may be difficult verging on
impossible, for example, to get the project to change the Habari logo,
but at least the discussion happens, whereas all of those decisions
happen for WordPress within an ivory tower.  And this is the case not
with just things as unassailable as logos, but with the direction of
the software or individual features of the software.

I could talk, and have, about many of these individual topics off the
cuff for quite a while.  :)

Owen

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