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Apr 20
2010
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Social Networking at Joomla.orgPosted by: Jen Kramer on Apr 20, 2010 Tagged in: web content , web business , social networking , JoomlaBook , joomla sites , joomla 1.6 , joomla 1.5
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Last night, the Joomla leadership announced that they were looking for request for comment on a social networking community to reside at Joomla.org.
We know it will either be called social.joomla.org or people.joomla.org. We know that it's been decided that JomSocial will run the community.
We are asked for input about whether this is something we'd use, what we want included, and how we think we'd use it.
Does anyone see a problem with that? We have the URL all picked out and the technology that will drive the site. But we're not sure HOW we would use it, or IF we would use it.
Go check out the thread, and you'll see that the major themes in the comments include:
- We debate Google Forms vs. other methods of collecting data.
- A huge debate over the merits of JomSocial. (This debate also raging on Twitter.) The debate is focused on JomSocial vs. other social networking plugins, as well as JomSocial's history as a non-GPL extension.
- A few people pointing out that a strategy might be a good thing to have first.
Once again, let me shamelessly self-promote Chapter 1 (PDF) of my book, titled "I Want a Website and I Want It Blue, How Much Will That Cost?" I strongly encourage the Joomla leadership to read this carefully and think about the problem they're trying to solve with this website. If they can't come up with answers to the questions posed in this chapter, maybe the site should not be built until they do.
As many of you know, I teach at the Marlboro College Graduate School. My students in the Master's of Science in Information Technologies program complete a master's thesis project (we call it the capstone). Many of them plan and build a website as part of that process. If one of my students proposed to create a social networking site for Joomla for their project, I wouldn't let them go forward until they could adequately answer a bunch of questions.
1. Joomla has social networking channels across the internet, both official and unofficial, including Google groups, Joomla forums, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Skype, ICQ, and more. How do those channels integrate with other methodologies of communicating with the Joomla community? Get a scope on what these channels are and why they exist. What problems are they solving? How are they being used? Are all channels required, or could they be boiled down to fewer channels? How do these channels compete or collaborate with the social site that's envisioned? Prepare a statement for each official communication channel, stating the purpose of that channel, who has access to it, and what kind of information is communicated through it. Look for redundant, outdated, and trivial channels -- can any of the channels be eliminated or combined, so the message is more efficiently communicated to the community? How does the social networking site fit into general Joomla communications?
2. The Joomla forums have uncounted posts. People are talking to each other there. What does the social networking site offer that the forums are not currently addressing? How does one differentiate between a post in the social community or a post in the forum? Presumably the forum posts are about tech support. Does the social community compete with the forums? Does it draw attention away from them or toward them? What do you do about posts in the social community that belong on the forums? Or does it make more sense to integrate the forums into the social community? How will the difference between the forum and the social community be explained to newbies so it's easy to understand?
3. Spend some time looking over the Joomla.org family of sites. Developer.joomla.org was last updated in October 2009, when Joomla 1.6 Alpha 2 was released. The other sites are updated semi-regularly. Presumably sites are not being updated due to time constraints. So how will adding to the family of Joomla.org sites help solve that problem? How does the social networking site fit into the joomla.org site structure as a whole? Is it a simple addition to the Joomla site network, or will it take information from other areas of Joomla.org?
4. I hear a lot about not enough moderators in the forum, not enough people answering questions in the forum, not enough people helping with Joomla 1.6 development. I imagine that there will be many volunteers to help build a social networking site; there are bragging rights involved, after all! But once the site is built, who is going to be the moderators and maintainers? How do you attract and keep these volunteers?
5. The first few months of this site's life post-release will be absolutely critical, as people arrive and try out the site for the first time. Who are the people we want to attract to a social networking site? How do we keep a positive voice? What do we want to guide them to talk about? You can post a general social networking site -- and you will get general social networking outcomes. Or you can focus the site to discuss something in particular.
All Together As A Whole is a great example of how this was done. It's not just a site devoted to general social networking around Joomla (which this proposed site appears to be). ATAAW focuses on how collaboration happens to create the Joomla Magazine, user guides, and other information for the Joomla community. There are many valuable lessons to be learned from this community, its formation, and the people it attracts.
6. How does success or failure of this community get measured? What is a recovery plan if the site is deemed a failure? How does the judgement get made, who judges its success or failure, and who determines what happens next? Where is the accountability surrounding the site?
Finally, some truisms about any website project, particularly those with two-way communication.
- If you build it, they won't necessarily come.
- If you build it, sometimes they come, but "they" are not the people you anticipated.
- It's so easy to build it. There are predictable problems and solutions to building any website. But people are wholly unpredictable. Even if you guide people to contribute to the site in specific ways, they will still surprise you in other ways. Some of those surprises are good, and some are not. How do you deal with the unpleasant surprises?
Note to those debating JomSocial: I totally agree that it's a worthy debate to have, what message Joomla.org sends to the community by adopting an extension that was not previously GPL, having made such a huge deal about GPL in the extensions directory. However, I believe the debate is premature. Note all points above have little to nothing to do with technology. They are larger strategic questions that need to be answered before we can even start discussing what technology would drive such a website.
Indeed, I think that we should debate whether this site is required at all. I would argue this site is not required, needed, or desired, though I would be delighted to be convinced otherwise. The "cool" points are high, but I worry about the life of the community long-term. I worry this is another ego-driven project within the Joomla community, in which people want to develop a high-profile project they can have associated with their name, without a thought of what comes after launch.
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Subscribe to this comment's feedwritten by brian teeman , April 20, 2010
Oh why can't I write so eloquently, clearly and concisely as you.
I saw from the mailing lists that you attempted to raise these issues back in Feb but they fell on deaf ears
written by Jeremy , April 20, 2010
I can't really find any point where I disagree with you Jen. I'd also rather see focus placed on existing sites before adding another.
I also apologize for asking about Google Docs, it was simply a question related to the methodology for gathering feedback and its transparency. Also there is no way for me to update my thoughts. /Me will focus better to focus
written by Wilco Jansen , April 20, 2010
This is a very well formulated blog post sharing one of the reasons I am puzzled about that post.
Asking feedback on a decission made is something different then involving people in the process, and something totally different then getting community involved. The demo site was a good starter, could be improved, but it was an open call with a clear defined end-goal up front. Why was this idea not shared openly first? (and don't tell me it was discussed on a maillist that is not accessible from everyone). Where do you want to go? Why not put out a challenging request to the community? From there make a decission, and then get it moving. Takes a little bit more time, but would increase involvement in my opinnion...to summarize; how do you want to get something social going if you are not even able to get your community involved?
written by Andrew Eddie , April 20, 2010
I can't really fault the arguments Jen, because that's exactly what I'd advise a client. I hope you submit them. But I can't help but feel it takes some of the fun out of it, because this isn't a work for hire (don't get me wrong, the principles are still valuable).
It does go without saying that some of these things were indeed discussed over an extended period of time on a mailing list somewhere in the ether that only a portion of the Joomla community had access to. Many decisions have, are and will continue to be made that way and the wider community has recently had their say on when they'd like to have their say heard in those processes. The Social Site RFC is a part of that process, whether you disagree with the timing or not, you are still getting a say. I would encourage people to fill out the form and not waste the opportunity.
Anyway, working through your points (and this is just me with my backyard hat on, not talking in any official capacity, well, you'll get where I do if I do), for me #1, the Joomla sites have fairly well defined purposes and I'd argue none act in a social capacity when compared with twitter or facebook and so on. Twitter is amazing in an improbable way, as is facebook but I personally use them for different things. Facebook is about collecting my old schoolmates. Twitter is about marketing but both suffer from excessive "noise". I'd use a social site to be able to be "me" purely in the Joomla context. Sounds like a really cool idea actually. It sounds like a place where I can find out where other people fit into the Joomla jigsaw puzzle as well, maybe even catering for JUGs so we can get off meetup.com.
On #2, the forum has a clear purpose. It's to get help. There's no room to be yourself, talk about yourself or anything like that. A social site doesn't compete because my space is essentially, if not selfishly, about me. I can choose, or not, to be involved in other people's portrayals of themselves.
On #3, for the record, the developer.joomla.org reboot is nearing completion. Yes it's all about time but what site isn't? We are doing some fancy things with continuous integration and testing reports and it will be rather cool. Would love to have had it live by now but, hey, it isn't. People do what they can. I think a social site compliments the family of sites beautifully.
On #4, there are people interested in doing the social site. It will no doubt attract people to run it. ATAAW is proof of that.
On #5, I really have to point out that ATAAW just started overnight and probably didn't go through any of this community consultation "before" it launched. What probably happened is a few people got together and though "hey, this could be fun" and just acted, with or without thinking (joke). And heck that's cool isn't it (that's why we are in the Open Source movement in the first place)? Anyway, I think most things start out organically and to some extent you see how they go. This site by its very nature is completely at the mercy of the wind - but will have one advantage in that the project has asked for your input prior to launch. We've a lot of experience with crowd control in forum and mailing list environments. Basically all "the project" should be doing is ensuring people play nice in the sandpit, but other than that, they make of it what they will. That's kind of the point of social sites as far as I can see?
On #6, I have no answers. Measures of success are so closely linked to personal experience. You say ATAAW is successful. Why? What's the metric? I honestly don't know (maybe the answer is the measure of success is whatever you want), but it is in the wider sense (well, ok, I disagree with some fundamentals but I can't ignore it's popularity - I'm not an ostrich). We can probably infer without too much risk that if an unofficial social site is successful, then an official one will attract some following, enough to make it worthwhile anyway. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't always work that way I know - give me a break, it's my guess
Just on JomSocial, there have been many souls talking to Azrul over many years and their decision to go GPL has been warmly welcomed (which is great because it's a really amazing piece of software). I should also point out that the choice of extensions has never been up for community debate for any of the joomla.org family of sites. Whether that's a good or bad thing is immaterial, the point is it's never been an issue before (is anyone complaining about K2 for the magazine site in the same way?).
For me though, I'd love to see this site come to fruition. It would give me a Joomla-specific place to spread my wings and maybe talk about things other than development. Bring it on I say
written by Amy Stephen , April 21, 2010
I am very excited about the social networking initiative. It's something I wanted for Joomla! since I first visited with Robert Douglass and Moshe Weitzman 2 or 3 years ago when they first built Drupal Groups. I believe that the Drupal Groups resource is one of the most important reasons their community engagement multiplied by unheard of magnitude.
I opened ATAAW because I couldn't convince the project to do this on property, and I felt like we had not bounced back from the GPL talks and that the negativity in the community was growing. I was convinced that if we simply provided a place where people could network, and learn how to get involved, they would begin to solve their problems.
Andrew is right, there was no community consultation prior to my filling out the form at Ning. But, since that moment, there has been nothing but community driven activity. That involvement is the very fabric of this peer moderated environment and it's the only reason it works and it's the only way it will ever work.
As Andrew says - it's not about the money, so it's got to be about something people feel ownership in and derive value from. They are the best ones to decide what it should be, not anyone else.
There were many surprises, but one thing that I simply had not anticipated was that ATAAW would give the collective community a voice and what that mean when the community was frustrated. I'm glad I had not anticipated that because it would have discouraged me from trying.
Good things have come from hearing the community voice. For the first time ever, we have published agendas from OSM, and financial information, and a way to propose names for the board, and a RFC system for code ideas, and soon, a way to volunteer for community jobs.
Now, the real test comes. How can we engage the community in the work?
That's the phase we are at and opening the doors and encouraging that involvement is just as important as providing information and transparency to process. I am eager to hear Mark and Louis's announcement on the 1.6 Bug Squad. That's the initiative that Wilco introduced for 1.5 and we will need third party developers to get in there and work. Wendy has the sign up form almost ready so that non-development members of the community can volunteer in areas of interest and skill.
I see the project starting to adapt and move from a "do it" role to a role of enabling the community to get things done. The primary role of the project should be to provide the community with just the right conditions and climate and "house" that it can evolve and grow and produce exceptional, creative code and documentation and PR material and JUGs and so on.
The goal of the "social network" is to support that process. That's it. Nothing more, and nothing less. Bear in mind, the community has to decide what that work is and the process could be slow, noisy, look unproductive, and so, on. Communities are messy business but it will work if we all support it.
All Together as a Whole is the goal, it's not the place. We are behind this and ready to help if needed and will happily unplug when no longer needed. This is good stuff. Combining it with the other advancements we are seeing happen in the Joomla! project at incredible rates, and ones hope soars.
written by Andrew Eddie , April 21, 2010
Hi Jen. Thanks for the reply.
I have no issue with ATAAW or [almost] any other site running on Ning (some people took my tweet out of context). I *would* take exception to Joomla's social site running Ning or similar (but I'd get over it eventually). For the record, I would have preferred ATAAW stayed purely developer related and may one day have got involved in that post 1.6 flurry, because that's the itch I want to scratch. What it is today is not something that rings my bell.
Yes, every site needs planning but I think you presuppose that not one shred of planning has been done. That's not the case.
At the end of the day though, you need to be prepared to take risks on things. You don't grow that way. Sure this site could fail. So what? 1.6 could fail miserably despite the best efforts of the few dozen strong community actively supporting it's production. Other people in the community are willing to give it a go and it's going to happen. Now is the time to have your say in the process, which could involve saying "stop" I guess but so far my informants tell me the submissions are intelligent and quite considerate ... so there are others wanting to see this happen. I've put my 2c worth on the Google form, I hope you do to.
written by Andrew Eddie , April 21, 2010
Correction: I meant you don't grow if you don't take risks.
written by xela , May 13, 2010
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