Who is part of the TWiki-Community

With all this talk recently about "the TWiki community" some people must be getting confused. Who, or what, is the TWiki community?

The list below is an attempt to list the members of the community that have made themselves visible by one or more of the following:

• actively contributing to building the TWiki community
• participated in community meetings
• been active on Codev
• been active in the Support helping others
• contributed to extensions and continuously maintain them and react to bug reports and questions on the dev topic

The list does not include those that

• passively just use TWiki and ask for help in support web
• once contributed an extension but never followed up and maintained them and supported them
• people that contributed in the past but do not contribute anymore

By it's nature the community is hard to identify, but we can make some effort to recognise those people who are part of the active community (or at least, have been over the last 12 months or so) by looking at their postings in TWiki.org webs, and their attendance at meetings. We can also identify people who are particularly active in their special interest domains (the "supporting community", if you like)

We are rapidly approaching a cusp point in TWiki's history, and it is becoming increasingly important to identify those people who are in the "active community", so we know who we are speaking of when we use that phrase, and we know who can be expected to express an opinion. The following list is an attempt at identifying a snapshot of that "active community" as at 2008-07-21.

Because it's also important to some people to be able to identify proposed roles within Peter's proposed governance structure, and TWiki-related commercial interests, columns are made for that. The list is almost certainly incomplete. If we incorrectly stated your affiliations, or you consider yourself "active" and we missed you off completely, or we did list you and you consider yourself "passive", then our apologies. Please amend the list as appropriate. Note: if you have no commercial interests, then there is no need to state that; it's assumed if you don't list anything.

Commercial interests is in no way a negative or unwanted thing.

-- Contributors: CrawfordCurrie, KennethLavrsen - 21 Jul 2008

Discussion

What about Plugin Contributors? Aren't they somehow contributors to the TWikiCommunity as well?

-- CarloSchulz - 21 Jul 2008

Absolutely. But most of them are passive contributors under the above definition; they focus just on their own plugins, and rarely stir.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 21 Jul 2008

Excellent initiative

I find that those that actively maintain plugins are as worthy to be on the list as the core programmers. An hour contributed is an hour contributed. But those that threw code over the wall as a plugin and have not shown up since or updated plugins for the new TWiki versions should be considered as "history". I added some names of people that maintained plugins the past 6 months on SVN - some have had significant positive impact for me and my users with their fantastic plugins.

-- KennethLavrsen - 21 Jul 2008

I took the liberty of moving my name to 'passive', based on CDot's description above. Maybe a third category, for supporting role, would be useful without much dilution? Or should those in a supporting role be considered active even though they don't "contribute to discussions, to meetings, to Codev, to Support" as often as Core Team members?

-- ScottHoge - 21 Jul 2008

Scott, thanks, you understand the point of the list. Though it's a bit of a Catch-22; if you care enough to move yourself in the list, then you should possibly be classed as active!

What I was driving at was a list of people who, when they see an issue that they think affects the health of the open source community, are likely to do something about it. If a plugin author starts expressing opinions on the issues I mentioned, then of course they should be regarded as active, but simply supporting a plugin doesn't IMHO qualify as "active in the building the TWiki community".

-- CrawfordCurrie - 22 Jul 2008

Interesting: According to that table at least 16 out of 26 of "active" community members have commercial interest in TWiki.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 22 Jul 2008

I have merged the two tables to one. I find it pretty arrogant to dismiss a whole group of plugin authors just because someone finds plugin authors less worthy while people that never contribute any code but just shouts at others on Codev qualifies as active.

The list above is assumed to be the start of the list of who should be allowed to vote for the TCC. And dammit the guy that maintains the HolidaylistPlugin does more for the TWiki community than many of those that have been put on the active list. And for sure he has done a lot of good for my users that loves his plugins. Others in the passive list are among the best support web contributors. They are as worthy to be given a vote for who sits in the TCC when the election comes up. I do not want to see some core developers put themselves in an A team and plugin developers in a B team with no rights and no vote.

Just because people can vote there is nobody that forces them to vote. So there is no need to make this active/passive split. The passive will not vote anyway.

-- KennethLavrsen - 23 Jul 2008

I felt very uncomfortable reading this post that splits the TWikiCommunity artificially into two. There are many behind the scene contributions I personally very much appreciate; work done by folks who do other things than the all important core coding. If you look at TWikiHistory, I am thinking of Steffen P and Richard D (testing), Carlo S (usability), Rod B and Michael C (marketing), Stephane L (twiki.org wiki champion), Harald J (customer support), to single out a few.

Then, as Kenneth points out, there are all the active plugins contributors who bring tremendous value to the TWiki project. The least to say, I find it disheartening to consider plugin authors second class citizens; collectively on behalf of the community I would like to apologize to Scott H, Graeme L, Simon C and others who do not participate in the Codev web but work hard on their TWiki extensions. Thank you Kenneth for merging the two lists into one!

-- PeterThoeny - 23 Jul 2008

Oh, for goodness sakes. I was just trying to bring clarity to the language that is used every day, not create an electoral roll or create artificial divisions. It was intended as a constructive step, to try and let readers know "who is who" in the community, and more specifically, to give people like myself a chance to declare any commercial interests that may impinge. There was never any stated or implied intent to disenfranchise anyone.

Kenneth, you initially welcomed the initiative. What changed to make you suddenly misread the intent, and use such strong language?

Peter, you write "There are many behind the scene contributions" - yes, that's why most of the people you mention above are were listed as active.

Forget it. I'm sorry I ever wasted my time trying to do something constructive in this governance discussion, as it's clear that only one view of the world is allowed.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 23 Jul 2008

There's two parts here. One is activeness in the community, and another is contribution in the community. Two very different things here. And if activeness is one of the criterias for being a TCC, then Crawford done a good job.

As far as I can see, contribution was not wholly part of the TCC criteria, and even if it is, it should be kept as a separate list or column. Where's it?

So why the bashing? Come on guys, it's embarrassing to see people much older than me (I'm only 25), who supposedly has much more experience, wise and intelligent, going at each other rather than finding solutions for the benefit of TWiki. It's disgraceful for the TWiki community at large, am sure. Funny how TWiki's philosophy is collaboration, which we struggle to achieve.

-- KwangErnLiew - 23 Jul 2008

"Funny how TWiki's philosophy is collaboration, which we struggle to achieve."

True words. And again it is all about communication.

-- CarloSchulz - 23 Jul 2008

Red letters, the comitee has spoken comrades.

-- JoostKattegat - 23 Jul 2008

It was me who split the table into two parts! It was not my intention disrespect anybody (active or passive). I did not put anybody on the passive list who did not declared himself passive.

I did not interpreted this list as a preparation for elections, neither I do now.

Thank you CDot for starting this list. It helps me to understand who we are!

-- OliverKrueger - 23 Jul 2008

The way Crawford put it, he ONLY MEANT t.o participation:"That group of people who actively contribute to building the TWiki community, whether that contribution is to discussions, to meetings, to Codev, to Support". There is nothing more, nothing less.

IIRC, in one of the governance meetings Peter said that he wanted in the TCC people that are involved in the day-to-day of TWiki. That automatically creates a partition in the community (partition as in the mathematical definition, not as in "division"): Those that could be elected for the TCC, and those that cannot. And it actually makes sense, as TCC is supposed to be an arbiter in t.o, and you can arbiter what you don't know.

As an example of the concept: Do you know who SrikanthRevanuru is? From the Codev & Support point of view he is invisible, but he is the maintainer of the newly created EnhancedXpTrackerPlugin. He is an "active contributor", but is not involved in the day-to-day activities of t.o.

OTOH, I consider myself an "active member", but not an "active contributor" of the community, as I'm doing practically no TWiki-related development ATM.

This topic is really bad public rep for the TCC. I'm sure that all this thing could have been clarified and fixed without the red fonts, the violent disagreement and (harsh?) language.

I'm willing to bet that the response is caused by the bombardment that the TCC concept is sustaining (which some members are taking as personal), so please lets give TCC a chance.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 23 Jul 2008

I reacted not on the initial list - which I saluted. And still do. I reacted to the division of the list in two with a description of contributers that only do plugin development as not active.

Add to this that the many community members the past days have discussed elections of the TCC it is obvious to chain together the two.

I stand by my words. I think it is a bad signal to tell the plugin developers that they are considered passive. I do not see them as passive. I see them as active and I love the work they do and I find that they often add more value to me as a user than so many others. I believe the right signal to send is that there is one list.

I am usually the one that speaks for the plugin developers when a proposal is raised to deprecate func API so I also feel that I represent the lonely plugin authors views in the community.

-- KennethLavrsen - 23 Jul 2008

So this is a matter of definitions. Crawford was very careful to explain exactly what "active" means to him and the fact that "active" status varies with time... Let me equate Crawford's "active" with PPR:WikiCitizen and "passive" with PPR:WikiLurker, both of them only in the context of t.o (which is the domain of action for the TCC).

IMO, both PPR:WikiCitizen and PPR:WikiLurker could be good members of the TCC, but a PPR:WikiCitizen is more likely to be elected as more people know about their work. Bottom line: to be in the TCC, its better to be a PPR:WikiCitizen.

Can we change this page to use the PPR:WikiCitizen and PPR:WikiLurker concepts instead, and remove the ugly red font paragraphs?

-- RafaelAlvarez - 23 Jul 2008

Good input Rafael. It's a wiki, go and change it

-- CarloSchulz - 23 Jul 2008

I have refactored - hard. I admit I overreacted a bit in the form and language. Please feel free to refactor my refactorings.

-- KennethLavrsen - 23 Jul 2008

Sorry My bad. I didn't realize the way changes were merged was so painful.

-- SeanCMorgan - 23 Jul 2008

Fixed. No problem.

-- KennethLavrsen - 23 Jul 2008

good work

-- RafaelAlvarez - 23 Jul 2008

From the above discussion, one thing is apparent ..." Many of the contributors wanted recognisition"..

-- SrikanthRevanuru - 29 Jul 2008