Failed JRD launch drove me out of business

[NathanHawks]

I just want you all to know what the half-a$$ed gentrification of this project has caused.

I want to kill myself because ever since the JRD launched, I can't pay my bills.

That is not all. But with my life now in the trash, I don't have the wherewithal to be very eloquent right now.

I imagine you all have forgotten who I am by this point or else never cared.

The JRD approval processes you published are outright lies. The actual process is protectionism. The JRD was launched to prevent new operators from continuing to be successful because the old guard was angry at the competition and wanted to destroy us.

Congratulations. You destroyed people for your own greed.

[brian]

So your business was relying 100% on a single source (one that was completely free of charge to you) for its income? Surely not.

[pe7er]

I'm sorry to hear that you seem to have problems because of the new JRD website.

First of all, any business that fully depends on one medium of communication / advertising is IMHO destined to fail.
You can not, should not, blame any problems with your business on that one medium of communication / advertising.

Furthermore, I don't know anything of the problems that you have because of the new JRD website,
but your allegations towards the JRD team seem unfounded and a bit harsh to me.

Finally, I don't think that an angry attack towards a Joomla team will contribute in getting your issues solved.
I'd like to recommend you to stay polite, contact the team directly about your issues, and when having issues, be constructive in your criticism (and not use unfounded allegations).

I hope that you will get your issues resolved soon...

[NathanHawks]

So your business was relying 100% on a single source (one that was completely free of charge to you) for its income? Surely not.

I was relying on the Joomla forums, and a short list of five websites for free outright advertising. The time investment was all I could afford. You have to understand I'm an American with no money or status, and in the US's aristocratic corporate oligarchy, that means in normal circumstances no doors are open to me.

Then what happened is that Joomla.org endorsed a specific batch of providers. Even before that, of course, we had the plague of people who think FOSS means a magical land of willing slaves where economies don't apply. After that, even though my efforts drove my website traffic briefly into the realm of a hundred or more unique visitors per day, nobody was buying anything. They were coming to me in droves to read my blog, thoroughly encouraging me to continue enslaving myself for their educational needs so that they could continue to DIY, but they were going to JRD when it was time to buy service.

Try to understand that "my business" is me in a tiny bedroom desperately trying to get paid for my work... in retrospect, doing so in what has apparently become an environment exploitative and purely consumptive towards those just starting out. This forum ate up my volunteerism and in the long term, it gave me nothing but ruin back.

Your criticism would be valid if it was reasonable to expect every freelancer goes into business with a stable life situation and the ability to fund the traditional necessities of a venture. That is no longer a reasonable set of assumptions (at least in America) and hasn't been for a very long time.

[NathanHawks]

I'm sorry to hear that you seem to have problems because of the new JRD website.

First of all, any business that fully depends on one medium of communication / advertising is IMHO destined to fail.
You can not, should not, blame any problems with your business on that one medium of communication / advertising.

Furthermore, I don't know anything of the problems that you have because of the new JRD website,
but your allegations towards the JRD team seem unfounded and a bit harsh to me.

Finally, I don't think that an angry attack towards a Joomla team will contribute in getting your issues solved.
I'd like to recommend you to stay polite, contact the team directly about your issues, and when having issues, be constructive in your criticism (and not use unfounded allegations).

I hope that you will get your issues resolved soon...

Intended with respect...

1. You are just following Brian's semi-sarcastic guess when you accuse me of only trying one venue. Read my reply to him and note that his guess was quite far off, but nevertheless that the not-quite-half-ready launch of the JRD did lead the customer base to believe a better place had arisen for shopping for services, and to make the (quite expected) assumption that anyone worth hiring would now be found in the JRD.

2. It is too late. I am already too [censored]. It shouldn't have happened in the first place and now I am just laying the bodies at your door where they belong.

(That is, respect for you personally... and, at your door, meaning, the community's.)

[NathanHawks]

PPS do a Google search for Joomla Tech Support without quotes and you will see how hard I worked to gather business.

[Soren Jensen]

Hi Nathan.

I am not sure I understand how the JRD has ruined your business. Are you not listed there? Are you saying that it is too easy to find providers there and so now, no one finds you? What has changed? How did users used to find you?

I am honestly confused.

[NathanHawks]

Endorsing a list of providers means you have, by inference, declared everyone not listed, as not a valid provider.

My application was rejected by someone who obviously didn't do their job, because they asked me what my role in the community was after I had explained it. It was a clear case of "we have too much work to do, so we are reducing that workload by refusing to do anything past a certain threshhold - we are in clearinghouse mode."

I think that because they were not able to keep up with the demand, they should have withheld the launch of the JRD until they could handle the backlog of applications - then everyone worth including gets their endorsement as a provider, "launched" on JRD day one.

It is because they didn't do this, and because they didn't get to my app for like 2 months after I filed it, and then responded with a worthless "we're too lazy and just don't care" reply, putting me back in a queue.

Prior to the JRD launch I got work by:
- providing excellent support at the forums
- ads at a handful of free advertising sites
- a well-SEO'd website (I'm still at #3 for Joomla Tech Support in Google despite quitting this community 2 months ago in despair) with lots of information
- a price almost low enough to call it an impulse purchase, but high enough to be clearly professional
- an original (albeit not great) web design which I spent almost 3 full time months on including making it responsive
- actual reporting work to use my journalism skills, which briefly had me pulling 100 uniques a day (which I keep harping about... it's a big accomplishment for me)

What I am saying is that the JRD answers a lot of customer problems and so it makes sense that as soon as the JRD was available, nobody outside the JRD gets any business. I am saying that since my Joomla related income dropped from > $1k a month, to zero, very suddenly, with no real change besides the fact that the JRD had launched, means the JRD having launched without me, and the JRD volunteers balking at their investigation of community involvement -- forums support activity so prevalent it would have taken 15 minutes to get four rubber stamps on my application from people who know me -- this combination of factors sank my battleship and also removed all good will I feel towards this community.

This community tends to feel like by using Joomla, you owe the community. To an extent... that is obviously appropriate.

When someone spends so much time volunteering that providing support is an unpaid full time job with unpaid overtime, the community owes that volunteer. That volunteer has probably done more for the community than the community has done for him.

By launching the JRD with incomplete ability to actually operate it, they drove people out of business. They weren't thinking things through and now they want to just forget their mistakes, just like Joomla always does. 1.5 to 2.5 transition? Pff never heard of this 1.5 of which you speak, go talk to redComponent or whoever feels like cleaning up after us this year. Oh does our [censored] never actually work as advertised? Pff get certified, lick our boots, and we hope you were ready for 6-8 months of income instability because if not, you chose the wrong software to support. Joomla.org doesn't have to be professional, but you have to act like we are, or we'll exclude you. We'll ask you for feedback about things, but we'll insult you if you say anything but "shut up and take my rubber stamp."

I have massive issues with the overall gentrification of this project, as it strives very hard to forget about its volunteer open source roots, and backstab anyone who hasn't already reached a certain tier of established financial security yet. The apathetic responses I have had over this basically confirm that this is an insider's club. Form letter style assumptions are thrown at me to let me know that I am dismissed and nobody is going to be dumb enough to be real about that. I can waste my breath and time and effort all I want, it gives the people behind the gentrification project more opportunities to practice actively not giving a [censored] while they deliver their standard canned responses to protest with a straight face.

Joomla.org has undergone corporate takeover. If it wasn't outright laziness and apathy and not thinking things through, then I was omitted because:
- I compete for mind share with certain established providers
- I speak bluntly when I see a failing (for example, I said com_tags was crap before we were allowed to know that)
- And frankly because there isn't enough money in The Joomla Industry for companies with overhead, and freelance Mr. Web Fix-It guys, to share the same market competing for the same services on a walk-in style sales basis of customers finding the provider that fits them. I think this is perhaps the real biggest factor... Joomla-dom simply doesn't have enough paying customers, because this project bleeds users every time it royally f___s up, which is yearly, and relatedly it can't seem to find the off button for their retarded corporate decision making process. Thanks to user abuse, there is simply no money in Joomla anymore because nobody willingly remains a long-term Joomla user.

And that which crumbles, does a lot of damage on its way down.

[Soren Jensen]

I am part of the JRD team. Although my tasks have been more in relation with the technical setup and not the approvals of applications, I can tell you that the members who did look though the applications worked very hard (also) volunteering their time.

I am sorry, your business has taken a nose dive, and even more sorry that you are blaming the community that gave you that business in the first place. I do not however believe that the JRD had much to do with it.

The JRD is still in the early stages, and although we do start hearing people say that they are getting traffic from it, it does not yet have a huge impact for any businesses we are aware of.

Almost all the JRD volunteers have listings in the JRD and have businesses related to Joomla services, and we discuss these things informally among ourselves.

I think you are barking up the wrong tree. Something else must have happened to cause your traffic drop. Have you had a look at your analytics?

When I search for Joomla tech support (without quotes), I see your page as number 10, not number 3. Surely that would have a much higher impact?

Additionally, to be honest, IMO your site could do with an upgrade to the design. It does not look very professional compared to the sites you are competing with, and is basically a wall of text.

[NathanHawks]

I am part of the JRD team.

Then the rest of your post is pretty much moot, isn't it? Thanks for the insults. I appreciate that you can't imagine this being the best someone can do on his own design-wise (not that design has anything to do with providing tech support services).

Also, hah, since you have proven you can't/don't read:

I think you are barking up the wrong tree. Something else must have happened to cause your traffic drop. Have you had a look at your analytics?

Maybe you won't be so intimidated by a shorter wall of text in which I will repeat for the third or fourth time in this thread, my website stats have been amazing, but everybody stopped BUYING anything.

They WERE buying service. But they STOPPED. When the JRD launched.

I know you people are going to tell yourselves whatever you have to tell yourselves in order to go on blameless. Hmm, nobody in the JRD is doing stellar, did I not just say that this project gushes customers like a sucking gut wound gushes blood, and that part of the problem is that the mismanagement of this project has destroyed its user base?

[deleted user]

Nathan, honestly if you're going to balk at anyone who tries to converse with you on the topic simply because they have an affiliation with the project then this thread is going nowhere and everyone's time is best spent on other things. Truthfully, I don't even know why I'm bothering to answer your post, you're looking for attention and a forum to moan and sadly we're giving you the time of day to gripe in a non-productive manner.

Soren's post IMO is very fair, coming from someone NOT associated with JRD. I think he asked a very valid question as far as the analytics go. Do you have data to prove that it was the JRD launch or are you basing it solely on the timeframe of activities (which could be written off as pure coincidence)?

[Soren Jensen]

Nathan, I am sorry you were offended by my comments about your design.

I am honestly just trying to help.

[NathanHawks]

Michael,

Oh, do it again. Ask the guy who can't afford his rent to put together a statistical research paper for you for the sake of a pointless argument.

But only pointless when viewed as an argument. My goal is for you all to remember what I'm saying here when Joomla gets relegated to snickering obscurity for being so much lower quality than its volunteers tell themselves it is, and for being so full of short-sighted corporate raiders who think a coloring book is a structuring proposal, or that a certification program is at all compatible with an only-half-decent software platform that sometimes works as documented, in the few spotty places where it is documented. My goal is a future I-told-you-so because that's more satisfying than merely undoing all my work to position myself for this career.

Don't even get me started on what I saw in the dev discussion groups where you all can't be faced with a decision without somebody - often enough you - putting on the table (paraphrasing) "should we just stop making Joomla? Because it's hopelessly behind and everyone else is doing far better work than us at a much faster pace than us."

Because that's just not the point. You all are allowing corporate raiders to cash this place out. I am telling you that you will all be exactly as unhappy as I am about this, when you realize one day that you can't pay your bills with Kool-aid (edit: and rapidly evaporating goodwill from the marketplace). You personally are well enough known to have a good career afterwards, that is, unless anyone develops a probably-misguided concern about you being the head developer during the project's fall.

To anyone reading this in the future: Joomla's fall was not the coders' fault. If the competent and honest people were in charge, Joomla 3 would have been high quality software and larger businesses (its hypothetically ideal target market... who in reality can be advised to avoid it with an infinite-length pole) would be migrating to it in droves, instead of away.

PS: When my account is banned, I revoke my permission for OSM, or any party other than myself, to publish any content I have submitted to these forums.

[Soren Jensen]

And with that farewell I see no point in continuing this debate. Nathan has said his piece and so I will lock this topic for the future to marvel at.