> > If you, the core developers, find that forums are just tiresome and > none-productive, I totally respect and understand that. You want to > spend your time developing. How about just setting up a forum (doesn't > take too long!) and find some dedicated individuals willing to > moderate it (doesn't take too long either!)? Just set it up and never > visit it at all. At least you have then given the community an > official place to hang out, share, connect and most importantly: GROW!
Hi, I'm Aaron, and I'm part of the dev group. I thought I'd answer this question directly, since the current state of the forums is, in some part, my responsibility (not wholly, but partially). About a year ago maybe, I'm not 100% sure, we, the dev group, were struggling with the forums. On the one hand, it made the community visible and easy to interact with. On the other hand, it was indeed, full of total noobs. The noobs being there didn't bother us though. It was the interaction between the *lazy* posters and the more advanced users (and even, sometimes, members of the dev group). The "lazy" users were the ones who just showed up and said "Accordion doesn't work" or whatever. They didn't follow the instructions. They didn't search for an answer first. They rarely supplied code and, when they did, it was often very clear that helping that person was going to be fruitless - they didn't want to learn. They only wanted their page to do something so they could move on to their next copy and paste activity. The more advanced users, understandably, grew tired of this sort of behavior and increasingly reacted negatively to it. If someone showed up and posted something like "Framework X doesn't do this. This is stupid." then all hell would break loose. The result was that, increasingly, MooTools was getting a bad rep (and by extension the dev group were, too). The general perception was that we were unfriendly towards new comers and downright brutal towards them sometimes. It was perceived that we had a strong dislike towards jQuery and that we viewed ourselves as superior to all other frameworks. Despite our efforts to say otherwise (for example, http://www.mootorial.com/wiki/mootorial/00a-mootoolsvsothers), this rep persisted. The debate was between two options: close the forums entirely or just let it run rampant. The latter didn't seem like a good option. It was MY idea to disassociate the forums from the MooTools site entirely, and I'm still glad we did it. How people conduct themselves here in these forums (or mooforum.net) is up to them. The reputation that our community gets is up to or community to earn and shape. But no longer is the project itself responsible for it (well, it never could have been, but at least this way it's less likely that the framework and its developers will be held accountable for it). I actually suggested first that we set up something like mooforum.net. Just take the exact software and everything and move it to another domain. The devs could, for the most part, stay the hell away from it. I even suggested we set up some generic forum about javascript frameworks and invite other frameworks to send their users there (mootools.jsforums.com, jquery.jsforums.com, etc). That suggestion didn't go over that well, but everyone did agree on moving the forums away from Mootools.net, and so we have what we have now. I hope that this clears things up a bit. We do want to see MooTools grow and we do want new users to be able to learn it (hello mootorial!), and we are friendly, helpful people (the devs and most of the community alike). But our first priority is to build a solid framework that people can use, and having the forums not be our responsibility is a huge benefit. It's a weight off our minds as well as a daily chore we don't have a lot of time for. So we charge you - all of you - to be nice and helpful wherever possible. When someone is being lazy or ugly towards you, just walk away. If you can't say anything nice at all... find someone who needs your help and respects you and help them instead. Sorry this rant is rather long... -Aaron ----- The MooTools Tutorial: http://www.mootorial.com www.mootorial.com CNET Clientside: http://clientside.cnet.com clientside.cnet.com -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Missing-mootools-blog-updates-tp1092259p1098560.html Sent from the MooTools Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
