And its probably about you don’t want to separate the two communities. You want them as face to face and as chronic as you can possibly get. These are two groups of people that need each other. Developers to get the vital feedback and sense of contribution and end users for peace of mind and solace. For devs there have to be moments where its surely liberating to talk to people who are blank slates and haven’t had the aptitude or inclination but are now rapt with attention. Also quite a worthy challenge to try to explain things to this group because they can drive memes. Do you really know your code or project before you can explain it to an outsider? Devs are in a position where they are an instrument of fate at this point, that’s a hard place to be with a lot of energy coursing through it, they need to know that they are valued and a lot of people are vested in what they are doing and more than anything else want and need them to succeed. Think of the A different perspective thread: INVALUABLE. Can’t live on coffee alone.
I honestly have no idea what the point of this comment is.
Are you just trying to say that developers need to talk to users?
Honestly I don’t know why you’re asking.
Asking what? To clarify your comment? Because I want to understand…
Or the general proposal to anticipate needing to split the forum? Because I see this trend in many other technologies which allows for developers to have focused discussions and avoid distractions which aren’t relevant to answering specific tech questions.
I agree for a big part on that. Elon Musk is doing the same with SpaceX, when designers of their rockets want to go the meeting room, they have to walk through the working places where the folks are who actually build the stuff (meeting room is on purpose at that particular place). That way they can have a talk about how things are going with the engineers and other workers etc. Steve Jobs did the same thing, made meeting places where people from all over Apple could talk to each other. The question is, do we want this between the SAFE-users and the Dev-team? I think for a big part yes! But when there’s really deep technical stuff, and the Devs want a forum just like this, but only for in depth talk, I would understand that.
I didn’t mention moderation. I’m asking you to elaborate on why you think a split is required, helpful etc. I don’t have an opinion either way, but want to understand why you are advocating this. Personally I straddle both areas, so one place suits me. I’m not typical though and can see there might be benefits to devs having their own space, non tech community another etc. but it’s not obvious that’s the best way to go so if you can clarify that might help the discussion.
AFAICS the devs DO have their own space(s)
- Issues on github
- comments in JIRA
- the coffee table in Troon – wetware beats software
OK the last kinda excludes the SAFEHUBs but they too will have their own wetware dev interactions to some extent.
So I don’t see what the fuss is. GIven the progress that is being made, I don’t think lack of effective comms channels is a biggie right now
I don’t know how else to clarify…
I suppose I’ll restate and you can tell me what isn’t clear about my point.
Developers probably want a place that isn’t filled with conversations about non-developer things. A place to focus on specific developer related questions. This process is common among many other projects including Tor, bitcoin, etc…
Please tell me where you see general discussion mixed in with developer discussion working well and I shall reconsider based on those facts.
I’m not saying this as an absolute thing that needs to happen right now… I’m saying we should be prepared for an influx in developer interest wanting to have separated discussion channels because it happens everywhere else.
Looking back I see I did mention moderation… sorry!
I am not clear about whether devs need a separate “forum” or if well moderated categories would fill the bill. I thought maybe you could help.
I know it tends to be the case that devs hide away in their own space. Been there :-). SAFE is different in many ways, so I was wondering if we need to replicate that pattern and whether that’s the only way of dealing doing things. It occurred to me that splitting is really a way of reducing the need for moderation and wanted to check that out, and see if you had any other reasons for suggesting this.
We are not Google. This is the SAFE community.
You don’t seem to be thinking in terms of a collaborative community effort. First off if general discussion is mixed with development discussion the more non coders will take an interest in development and understanding the code. This leads to more discussion about philosophy, politics, and debate and discussion by the community about how the code should be written which in turn influences the project. It also inspires more people to learn to code. And the interaction between devs and regular people educate the devs as to what technical level people are and what they want to see in apps. Moreover developing a program isn’t just about writing source code as we have discovered while developing SAFE, there’s graphics design, UX developing, marketing, financial donations, brainstorming for apps, problem solving and all kinds of other things. Writing code is just one job out of many within the entire project. When you contribute to the project in any way you are developing it. Coders can’t buy their coffee if the crazy fanatics didn’t tell all their friends how awesome maidsafe was and some of them donated some bitcoin to the project so the coders could buy their coffee. See what I mean? I’m sure it’s not that simplistic but you get the point. The people writing code are not these supreme elites off in their ivory towers sending down gifts of code to the huddled masses nor should they be. They’re just shmucks like the rest of us that happen to have a particular talent, and like the rest of us, are using it to further a particular goal which is Project SAFE.
Right his comment made perfect sense to me so let me elucidate for you.
- Devs and regular folk need each other.
- Explaining a concept to someone who has no idea what you’re talking about forces you to truly examine if you truly understand it yourself and look at it in a new light. Regular folks force devs to TEACH and thereby LEARN their code in new perspectives. Teaching is learning.
- Non devs with all their questions and energy show devs that they are valued. If devs are isolated from non devs they won’t be exposed to that energy.
In short the point, I think, that @Warren was trying to make was that non devs need devs for information about the code they’re writing and education and devs need non devs as students and for feedback about the project not to mention encouragement and validation.
It seems a lot of you think I’m saying these groups should be completely separated. I’m not saying that… I’m just saying a specialised place for developers to discuss should be anticipated and maybe there’s merit in thinking about it now.
I suppose there’s nothing that needs to be done by any of us anyway because if devs want that, it’ll be created by someone as this forum was or they’ll start using the old mailing list (which should probably change away from Google since a lot of GPL folks refuse to use their services). So, ya @Southside I agree this isn’t a big deal as they do have their own spaces especially with the newly implemented RFC process. But who knows, an influx of new devs interested in the upcoming bounty program might change the dynamics a bit.
@happybeing, curious what you think distinguishes safe developement from other developer communities so I can understand your perspective better.
It might help to spell out what it is your building right now.
Isn’t there 2 new Project SAFE sites coming on-line for (1) Devs and (2) Consumers ?
One option would be to move this forum onto the Consumer site and create a new one for the Dev site.
But for that option I’d think we’d need to sacrifice the entire Off-Topic category which some would rally against.
If we think about the disruption this project will cause out there, were talking incoming from all manner of very technical people within their fields…imagine the additional technical tags that would be required here…it could turn into a real mess.
Myself, I would just go ahead and create a new Dev forum on the new Dev site and make it an awesome collaboration space for those guys. There’s nothing stopping us bringing their threads into here for a good ol thrashing…I’m sure they’d get wind of us ridiculing or back slapping them.
We need to think of the Project as #1 …what is best for the project going forward.
Every project has its own ethos and values, which are held by the people rather than the project. So while it’s not my perspective that counts (but what emerges from all of us) I’m saying though that I think SAFE is unique - for example in how far David has been willing to go to give it to people outside of himself, MaidSafe foundation, MaidSafe Limited etc.
This may not be unique, but it’s unique in my experience.
I agree we don’t need to do anything at this point. Discussion may still be useful.
Understood the overall uniqueness of MaidSafe’s situation in relation to the principle of non-ownership but I think we can see a similar situation with bitcoin… where bitcointalk is to this forum as the public bitcoin dev mailing list is to… some space that will most likely pop up for deep technical conversations that benefit from a focused discussion.
@chrisfostertv Since this forum is not owned or operated by MaidSafe, I was thinking that whatever developer version would have a similar ethos. Not sure if having it directly connected to the MaidSafe developer website would be necessary. Obviously we would link to it but the point of this discussion was to start thinking about our options. I’m thinking devs might be most comfortable with a mailing list and they would probably migrate to something along those lines.
But again, if mailing list… we probably want a non-Googleized version so GPL folks actually join. 
@Blindsite2k thank you that was it precisely. @chrisfostertv Do we think of SAFE end users as consumers? For me ‘consumer’ implies victim, or powerless, addicted, fool or a class of people who were born to be abused by being sold their own production. If someone were a consumer Id see SAFE as rehab through empowerment.
And why sugar coat this, my sense is that some who keep wanting to separate and segregate the site don’t want themselves, David, SAFE, its origins and its future associated with the rabble and so many foolish liberal ideas because they see it as embarrassing. But I think that reflects a value system that puts money, power and efficiency first and people at least inadvertantly as more of an afterthought. It may be an unexamined value system. Not everyone on the team is going to reflect a mature mix of vision, competence and liberal people-first values, but most of the core people do. Maybe I am confused but if it werent for my perception of David’s values and my sense if his commitment to them I would have lost interest and confidence.
@polpolrene Yes exactly. Also this process as you descibe it develops people. We want more communication not less. Its not noise or distraction or groupies. The forum may have a couple of million members at some point and it may have 10 thousand sub forums. Having it all searchable and easy to thread together will be important. This urge to split may simply be coming from people who want to run their own fiefdoms. A year ago there were two sites here momentarily and the site that seemed better in a lot of ways (from my perspective) was shut. And we’ve discussed the tendency to want to edit even the off topic.
We also have to remember there may be thousands of SAFE network forks it may be sheer arrogance to divide the seed’s forum. You’d be forking the form but in a diminishing way.
I wouldn’t go this far when describing a consumer however there’s a difference between being a consumer and being consumed by consumerism or consumer culture. If I create a product then it’s only worth is insomuch as my own use of it unless I can find someone else that wants it, i.e. a consumer. Producers are the supply and consumers are the demand. If there is no demand then whatever the producer creates still has little to no value. However I think where you are going with this is instead of just being wrapped up in a CULTURE of buying everything we should develop a culture of PRODUCING things. Yes of course there will still be consumers, not everyone can make everything, but everyone can make SOMETHING even if its only make paper airplanes or dance the macarana on youtube. Everyone can do SOMETHING. And coupled with further education and a willingness to learn new skills one can usually learn to do a few more somethings over time. So instead of a culture of buy buy buy we develop a culture of do do do. And of course yes we’ll still consume but we’ll consume in order to do the various things we want to do and the emphasis will be off of just getting new stuff but rather transfered onto doing more stuff and producing more stuff.
I realize this kind of veers of from the discussion a bit but the connection is this: we are developing a culture as well as a software. We are developing a way of interacting with each other as much as we are developing a piece of code. Yes maidsafe will spawn a host of different apps and organizations but think of the cultural difference between say the Linux community and say Microsoft or even Google. With Linux everyone is helping one another and there is definitely a more collaborative vibe going on whereas with Microsoft it’s all for profit, closed source and corporate. Windows is all top down vs Linux that is all bottom up. People produce stuff. So think of the culture we are producing here on the forums and subsequently in the SAFE community; where everyone contributes and is valued equally. Where devs are not greater than non devs and where everyone is encouraged to contribute in whatever way they can. Granted it might not be something that holds beyond the forums or this community but isn’t that worth preserving?
Agreed, seems like a natural progression.