Joomla! Community Magazine Writers Guidelines

[nikosdion]

@bushie: I think you are not doing GPL extensions any justice with your comments. Let me give you some examples of stellar GPL extensions with no commercial rival (or at least up to par with commercial software): JoomlaPack, JCE, VirtueMart. I could go on.

It is true that there are dozens of crappy extensions out there, all listed in the JED. Open Source software is more properly called Free and Open Source (FOSS) software. The "Free" part has to do with Freedom of Choice. If all of the extensions were proprietary, we'd have to spend a truckload of money just to figure out which one of them is appropriate for what we need. Furthermore, as most proprietary extensions are encoded, if you want to do something slightly or not-so-slightly different than the extension already does, you're screwed. And, mind you, GPL doesn't mean free of charge.

I'll give a recent personal experience in order to give you the big picture. I'm redesigning JoomlaPack.net so that I can sell subscription-based professional services. I was given a free license from Joobi to use their jSubscriptions software. It's proprietary and encoded. I am based on EU, so I had to take into account the EU VAT laws, i.e. I should charge VAT to EU residents unless they provide me with their VAT number which I have to validate against VIES. No subscriptions extension coped with that requirement. I could develop this feature, but jSubscriptions is a sealed black box. I dumped it and bought AMBRA.subscriptions by Dioscouri. I still had to pay for the extension, but since it's GPL I could hack my special requirement and provide a kick-ass integration.

If you are just a run of the mill site owner, you can't possibly care less about GPL vs non-GPL. But if you are a web developer, an integrator of extensions, you do care and you do need to have full source code available. You do need to be able to give your client the modified code without having to sign an NDA, without having to pay a huge "developer's license" fee and without having to jump through hoops. That's why GPL rocks and proprietary sucks, most of the times.

When it comes to JCM extensions coverage, I still believe that it is unfair to mix GPL and non GPL extensions. The non GPL extensions, as I said, are financially backed by companies with adequate funding. They can afford media exposure, they can afford hiring many developers and they can afford paying designers to make them pretty. Most GPL authors are doing development on their own time, losing money, not making any money. Comparing a kick-ass GPL extension with a horrible design to a lame non-GPL extension with super-duper eye candy will favor the non-GP extension because, sadly, people still judge the book by the cover and not the content. The whole idea of magazine exposure is to give GPL extensions a fighting chance. We want to give an unbiased look in the pros and cons of each such extension and let you, the reader, decide if it's worth exploring it, or dump it for a non GPL one.

So, please, let's not turn this thread into a GPL flame war. We're trying to do something useful for the community. Non GPL extension authors can market their products to the community as they see fit, but not through articles in the Community Magazine.

[AmyStephen]

Team 1
Saurabh Shah
Brian Sullivan
Norm Douglas
Miljan Vujosevic
Hilary Cheyne

Team 2
Ahmad Alfy
X5Creative
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Bo Astrup
Neri Valentin-Macias

The Team Leads (Hilary, Neri) can make certain their team members understand their specific roles so that Paul and Dex don't have to coordinate with so many people.

Does that sound like a good idea? And if so, Paul, do you want to contact the two of them and make arrangements for a "bringing them to speed" meeting? Those are just suggestions -- certainly not saying it must be done that way -- just trying to think how to make this easy for everyone to get started. Once it gets rolling, it should go on auto-pilot pretty well.

There are more volunteers. If we can get this one handed off to the leads, we can staff the other ones and get them going too.

Thanks guys!

[leolam]

People, congrats this is very, very good news and shows how well involved this community is.

Amy and Paul, one question though, who is verifying the content of an article on its validity and proper representation of its analysis of products, extension swat, name it? Who is proof reading and correcting? Who is Chief Editor and decides what is good for publication and what is rubbish?

It might be wisdom to ask extension developers to give their opinion what has been written and the Chief Editor might need to add the main comments of an extension developer to the article if the analysis of a certain extension are biased in the eyes of an extension/services provider. (or create a link to a formal reaction by the extension developer, even if the reaction is published on the site of the extension developer. That guarantees open and fair publications and makes sure that the editors will be careful in their verdicts and or presentations and gives any developer the entitlement to provide input as well....even forces him/her if the article is not all loving....It maintains in my opinion transparency and helps objectivity.

Leo

[AmyStephen]

Paul and Dex are the chief editors. With Hilary and Neri providing team leadership and a partnership between the two of them over this specific Magazine section (the Extensions and Services Review - or whatever they call it), I think there is good oversight in place.

I guess we will wait and see, but when I think about this section of the Magazine, I think of it as an introduction that exposes some of the best of the thousands of Extensions available. I would expect the articles to be positive, not negative. If there were serious problems identified during the preparation of the article, I recommend that the Extension be dropped from the issue and another Extension used, instead.

In my thinking, this isn't the place for a hard core "thumbs-up or thumbs-down" type of analysis, but rather a celebration of the work community has accomplished and what is available for use, and (basically) how you can use it and where and when it makes sense.

I assume comments will be enabled for anyone to add their ideas, including developers. That should help make certain no one is shut out. It would be good if the developer were available to the writer to help point out what is worth sharing or what distinguishes the software. Not always possible to arrange but might be helpful.

But, again, I just don't see the magazine as a good place for announcing an extension is bad. If that is found to be true during the evaluation, I recommend setting it aside. This isn't a tool to warn people against Joomla! Extensions - it's a promotional tool for those things we do well and a chance to celebrate Joomla!.

Anyway, my opinion.

[leolam]

Paul and Dex are the chief editors. With Hilary and Neri providing team leadership and a partnership between the two of them over this specific Magazine section (the Extensions and Services Review - or whatever they call it), I think there is good oversight in place.

Thanks for enlightening my KB ;-)

In my thinking, this isn't the place for a hard core "thumbs-up or thumbs-down" type of analysis, but rather a celebration of the work community has accomplished and what is available for use, and (basically) how you can use it and where and when it makes sense.

Glad to hear since that addresses some thoughts I had ;-)

I just don't see the magazine as a good place for announcing an extension is bad. If that is found to be true during the evaluation, I recommend setting it aside. This isn't a tool to warn people against Joomla! Extensions - it's a promotional tool for those things we do well and a chance to celebrate Joomla!.

Cannot concur more.

I have some different opinion on voting and commenting though. The Articles in the Magazine should be cleared from voting and commenting in my opinion since this can be done in the extensions directory (JED) and I see no reason to 'muddy' the Magazine with these features. I suggest with an evaluation of an article a link to the JED's posting is available where people can vote and/or comment already. Keeps the Magazine independent from opinions and maintains its credibility. I see no contribution in a war of votes/comments between favorites of certain template clubs, form generators etc in the magazine...makes no sense where Jed already provides the feature...It also avoids the interesting scenario where JED favors Form generator X and the magazine favors Form Generator Y (both on community votes) which is confusing and does not contribute imho?

[porwig]

I just don't see the magazine as a good place for announcing an extension is bad. If that is found to be true during the evaluation, I recommend setting it aside. This isn't a tool to warn people against Joomla! Extensions - it's a promotional tool for those things we do well and a chance to celebrate Joomla!.

I have some different opinion on voting and commenting though. The Articles in the Magazine should be cleared from voting and commenting in my opinion since this can be done in the extensions directory (JED) and I see no reason to 'muddy' the Magazine with these features. I suggest with an evaluation of an article a link to the JED's posting is available where people can vote and/or comment already. Keeps the Magazine independent from opinions and maintains its credibility. I see no contribution in a war of votes/comments between favorites of certain template clubs, form generators etc in the magazine...makes no sense where Jed already provides the feature...It also avoids the interesting scenario where JED favors Form generator X and the magazine favors Form Generator Y (both on community votes) which is confusing and does not contribute imho?

Thanks Amy and Leo for adding your thoughts here. I agree that the magazine should have a strong positive/celebratory perspective, and that the review teams should avoid writing articles about anything that's "bad". This does bring up the question "If the community votes on which extensions should be reviewed in the magazine, what happens if the community votes to have a bad extension reviewed?" If we implement the voting concept, perhaps we should make it clear that editors may choose to not have all top vote getters be reviewed.

Ultimately, I would like to see the newly formed review teams led by Neri and Hilary take a fresh look at all the ideas that have been discussed here, and they should have the freedom to adjust and refine those ideas if they feel that will improve the process and the result.

[porwig]

The Team Leads (Hilary, Neri) can make certain their team members understand their specific roles so that Paul and Dex don't have to coordinate with so many people.

Does that sound like a good idea? And if so, Paul, do you want to contact the two of them and make arrangements for a "bringing them to speed" meeting? Those are just suggestions -- certainly not saying it must be done that way -- just trying to think how to make this easy for everyone to get started. Once it gets rolling, it should go on auto-pilot pretty well.

There are more volunteers. If we can get this one handed off to the leads, we can staff the other ones and get them going too.

Thanks guys!

Thanks Amy for your help recruiting these new team members! I have contacted Neri and Hilary about this and they are quickly getting up to speed on their teams' work.