On 6/2/07, Sivakatirswami <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Let's climb a mountain, sit quietly > and scan the global information landscape below. > > PMwiki is all about collaboration. > > Set the code aside for a minute and look at the value system of what PM > is doing and the way he goes at it and the high, positive level of > cooperation among both naive users, naive admins and those who have PHP > competency and working together... > > It is "beautiful to behold."
Yes it can be beautiful, but sometimes it's not quite so. I came to PmWiki knowing nothing about PHP, found the community exceptionally helpful, and became incredibly excited about the software. And I dove right into learning it, using it, and eventually developing it. Some of my ideas may have been misguided, and my code was understandably naive and immature. Still I gave the best I could to the community, thankful for its generosity to me. Yet, for whatever reasons, I have repeatedly had my motives challenged, my mistakes ridiculed, my ideas rejected out of hand, and much more of the like. There were of course many others who encouraged me, patiently answered my questions, collaborated on the code, and expressed their appreciation for my efforts. Fortunately, these more than made up for the others. And lest I be misunderstood, I hasten to add Pm was the most patient and noble-hearted of the bunch. Always respectful, helpful, knowledgeable and fair-minded. Many times he was the only one who seemed to grasp what I was saying, and he provided tremendous guidance through my learning. I'm very, very grateful to him. So this mailing list has been good, and the maintainer great. But for me personally it has been far from what I would call beautiful. > Politicians and multi-nationals and many religions (not Hinduism) set > up boundaries and square off markets etc. walls are built and lines > drawn. > > Pmwiki is all about going a completely different direction. I > know it sounds like I'm overly romanticizing and idealistic, but really, > when you brought ZAP into the mix, we had faith you were on board that > vision. Some of us believed in you... That's what it's all about... it's > not just about PHP this or that. Maybe it's taking the metaphor way too > far, but in a world at war projects like PMwiki and others like it, > IMHO make a huge difference on the > "inner" landscape of the mind of human consciousness. If anyone was on board, I think it's fair to say I was. Countless hours--researching, testing, documenting, providing support. True, I was working to meet my own development needs, but I was eager to share whatever I could with others. (Ignoring the jeers and jabs along the way as best I could). But Sivaka, open source communities are not so idealistic, or open minded, as we wish. Their walls may be invisible, but they are just as real. My goal in developing ZAPwiki was not to create a competitor but to demo a concept (several actually) of how I thought PmWiki could work. Concepts radical enough I didn't think they could be readily grasped without a working model. But evidently those who challenge an existing mindset are just as quickly marginalized in the virtual world as they are in the non-virtual world. Human nature is human nature. > You may have good intentions, which boil down to "aspirations > for optimization" which is not a bad goal. But you are missing something > more important here on another level: To pull up stakes, and set > up another "nation" you "broke the faith." I have to admit, my experiment proved a rather shocking success even to myself. The forms processing concept worked far better than I would have ever guessed. But my honest initial first reaction was, we should do this in PmWiki. If you call that breaking faith, I'm not sure what to say. But I know it could be done in PmWiki, and I susect it could be done easily, making PmWiki far more more powerful. Maybe deep down I was hoping it would be done so I could stick with the PmWiki software and community I've come to love. But so far only one person has addressed any of the specific challenges I raised with any kind of intelligence Pm, as usual--who understood exactly what I was saying and respectfully addressed th issues. (My apologies if I overlooked someone) His basic conclusion though of "Sorry. No interest", and the communities general attitude, lack of interest, or even discussion, etc., leaves me little hope of seeing this come to pass. And I have little motivation left to try and push it. So in my mind, it seems to me PmWiki (the community) has broken faith. Yes ZAPwiki may have it's problems. I've been fixing bugs and plugging holes for the last couple days, and there's probably lots to go. But hey, its Acme software! Of course that was never the issue at all. But now that I have it in hand, I can't really imagine not having in-wiki skins, styles, etc. I love the backup and instant installation thing (I think I've got that problem solved). And the simplicity of the page format and matching markup does wonders for simplifying the code. And most of all I am totally sold on the incredible flexibility of being able to create and customize every site action I can conceive without ever having to touch the php. Again, all this could be done in PmWiki--and probably without too much trouble. But Pm has no interest, no one else seems interested, and frankly, I suspect I've lost interest in trying to port any of it back to PmWiki either. I've committed to seeing ZAP through till PmWiki comes out of beta. So I'll continue to be around. I may even get inspired enough to go ahead and port some of this back to PmWiki anyway. For the benefit of those yet to come, or perhaps already here but not grasping what we're talking about. Or hesitant to say something. Maybe. But it really is about time I get back to the project I came to PmWiki for in the first place. Thanks again to everyone. Dan PS. I did start a little mailing list for those interested in discussing any of this further. Just go to www.zapwiki.org to subscribe. My apologies to anyone I offended by bringing this subject up here. _______________________________________________ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users