Thanks for your reply, Toivo. It wasn't clear to me from the magazine article that the RfC—request for comments—procedure was intended as a replacement for the
Joomla! Ideas forum category. The article states, with emphasis added by me,
Whoever is interested in the feature can participate in the discussion. It doesn't matter where the discussion occurs, as long as access is open to those interested. This includes an informal discussion on official Joomla discussion media about whether the idea makes sense and is within the scope of Joomla's goals or not.
So, while the Joomla! Ideas forum
could be a place the article goes on to say that discussions will happen within the confines working parties that are established to investigate and decide upon each new proposals:
The Production Department Coordinator will ensure that the Working Group is provided with the necessary resources to work on the specification, such as a dedicated GitHub repository, mailing list, forum area, and similar tools.
It's really a question of whom the working party allows to participate in those discussions.
So, from that point, it
may be possible to use this forum as a place for discussions but it seems quite unlikely that it would happen, wouldn't you agree?
In the ten years or so that I have been a member of this forum, the class distinction between ordinary people, developers and OSM has grown wider because less actual problem-solving is undertaken at the J! forum and more problem-solving activity occurs elsewhere. I think it's important that people should be aware that this forum is not really an official organ of the J! project. The J! forum exists as a remnant of past era—and era when it was used by OSM and by developers to discuss future plans—as a place where the rest of us struggle to make sense of how things operate. I have not fully come to terms with how the J! project operates ... even after all of this time.
The Joomla! Forum™ is a bit like the frontend of a J! website. It's what the public sees. The public, for the most part, is unaware of what happens in the "backend". I've offered to help with "backend" aspects on numerous occasions: I've written emails, contributed to the J! documentation and to the J! magazine
(but you won't find me credited with any articles I've written, however). I haven't had any success in getting that foot in the door in the backend. It's not a case of not having tried ... and it's disappointing.
As you say, when one reads
https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/discussions/31704, the opening paragraph may come as a surprise to some people:
We are using GitHub discussions as a place to connect with other members of the Joomla! community. In discussion we want to focus on core and code related topics. If you have a question on how to do something with Joomla! [
The Joomla! Forum™] is the best place to ask. But if you have an idea on how we can do something different/better you [are] welcome to share your ideas in the GitHub discussions.
If you have found a bug, please open an issue [on the
Issue Tracker].
As we plainly see, the communications methods between all members of the community is splintering in different directions with no single unifying mechanism over all of it. That's not a complaint, by the way, it's just one ordinary member's observation of the way things appear.
If someone finds the spark of an idea from what I've written, either to write about it here (on
The Joomla! Forum™) or as an article for the
Joomla! Community Magazine or use
GitHub discussions, I would be pleased to read it.