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Features / Usability

Features / Usability


Tiki and Webdav

posts: 22

I tried to search for webdav discussions in the forums but got lots of tiki pages that didn't explain anything - including the webdave help page that doesn't tell me what I need to know. My apologies if this is a repeat:

1) How do I connect to the new (5.0) webdav feature from Mac? I can't seem to find a URL that works. Mac doesn't like the URL with ".php" on the end that the help page offers. Also, the URL is supposed to appear in the file gallery view, but it doesn't.
2) How do I connect to the new (5.0) webdav feature from Windows 7? Windows 7 lets you mount a webdav drive. However like the Mac it won't accept the ".php" URL syntax.

I'm pulling my hair out on this. I know it should be simple... right?

posts: 22

Daniel,
I got your note. Thank you. It's a little surprising to see that the forums aren't the way to talk about installation problems. I'll take your advice!
Best,
Eric

posts: 22
I'm not permitted to reply to that list group. It's probably appropriate, since I'm not a developer. But if you're saying I can't get help here and I can't get help there, should I be using this software?
posts: 1630 Canada

Hello,

That is not what he said.

You can join any Mailing lists.

You do not have to be a developer to join the developer mailing list. (you just need to register before you can post)

Best regards,

M ;-)


posts: 1817 Catalan Countries

Hi enovikoff, and welcome to Tiki community!

Did you try reading the documentation first, instead of first looking in the forums?
http://doc.tiki.org/WebDav

Free Time is limited (like mine writing the documentation about WebDAV, with as much as I could understand from the feature itself and asking to coders in the devel list)

Most coders are in the devel list which is very active, and a few also active in Irc channel, and most of them use their time to code and bugfix issues in Tiki. Looking also to forums takes huge amounts of time, that not many coders have, but they decide to invest their time into looking at bugs reported in http://dev.tiki.org , as well as do some consultancy jobs, etc.

If you request for FREE support, you can use forums, read (and improve) documentation, use IRC, etc.


Regarding your question about WebDav, check that the problem is not with your OS and applications. I also tried Mac OSX when testing webdav, and I got very scarce support from Mac applications.

Get a Gnu/Linux OS instead in your Mac box, if you want or need to use WebDAV more extensively, or try using KDE from Mac ;-)

And sorry, no idea about win7 (never needed to pay for that software, and never tried it)

Good luck

posts: 22

Xavi, thanks for your reply.
However, I found it -literally- horrifying. Perhaps I'm accustomed to the kind of user-community support I get with Joomla, but there were several aspects of your reply that seriously bring using TikiWiki into question. So for the moment, I'm going to talk to you about process instead of my broken TikiWiki, which I will eventually either discard or pay for support for. This may be open-source software, but if it's not run like a professional project, it will fail. After all there are other wikis out there! I'm not trying to insult you, but what I read in your replies got me very, very worried. This may sound like a rant, but consider for a moment that it contains some very important observations:

1) The documentation is terrible. (I'm speaking about the WebDAV feature here, but I'm guessing it's the whole documentation) It reads like a bunch of disjointed pieces of advice with no thought given to what the user is trying to accomplish. You shouldn't be writing documentation for code you didn't write - what kind of a waste of time is that? You shouldn't be chasing coders to document what they wrote. Instead the project should disallow code submissions without documentation updates. After all, if people can't use it, why write it? The project doesn't exist for the benefit of the coders!

2) The forums are terrible. I searched the forums and found no questions or answers on WebDAV. My guess is nobody is using it because they can't figure out how. Or because it was mis-implemented. Giving a URL that executes code (...php) as a WebDAV URL breaks reasonable operating systems who are looking for a file-system interface. If the people could use the feature, they could help each other out (see documentation, above!)

3) The word FREE appears in your response twice. Either this software is free or it's not. If it's free then modern standards for open source mean that it has community support. If there's no community support and you have to pay to get it, the software is a free toy for developers but not a free application. Again, take a look at Joomla - they have it figured out. Joomla developers and users don't grudgingly carve out some time to write code or support it: they allocate time in their lives for the project and then dedicate themselves during that time so that they don't feel taken advantage of. If you volunteered at the local hospital, you wouldn't keep reminding the patients how busy you were, would you? Joomla's forums are not starved for attention. The first sign of this was that the first reply asked me - a user - to join the developer's network. Bad idea: you don't want me writing code or documenting functionality I can't understand! That's how you got the documentation you have.

4) When a user says that they can't user your system with Windows or Mac, you don't tell them to go to Linux. This is groupware for COLLABORATION. People don't want to change all their other applications in order to collaborate. If I create a spreadsheet in Excel and want to share it with a customer, I'm not going to switch to Linux and make them switch to Linux to share it. I love Linux, but you can't make the world switch by writing TikiWiki. Your comment about never having to pay for software was alarming. It says that you don't understand business. Businesses use windows and Mac. TikiWiki *must* work with them, or die. My little business got a chance to grow because of open source software, but it still needed to follow some standards to do it.

5) I don't think you understand why people use WebDAV. It's a distributed file system protocol that gets around the limitations of CIFS, NFS, etc. which don't work well over WAN. So Mac and Windows users need it even more than Linux users do, for collaboration.

Open source software offered my small business the advantages of low startup cost and great innovation. But nobody in business expects anything to be free, they just like good value. I will pay a consultant to help me get this working, but I'm going to limit his time to 2 hours to keep from trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. I'm actually worried I won't find a consultant who understand what a business needs, after reading your post.

Again, this wasn't written to upset you, but for everyone on this project to see and think about: if you don't understand your customer - even for a free product - you won't have one in short order. It's great if this is a play project for developers, but from the web site it looks like it's aimed at being more than that, which is why I started to use it.

Best regards,

-Eric

posts: 289 United States

It's hard to disagree with you, never-the-less it's also hard to hear Tiki take a bashing (although justifiably so). I think we can say that it's a great piece of open source software with the right ideas and intentions but perhaps not always executed well.

Unfortunately the way the community works here at the moment is that the majority of support falls on a handful of longstanding contributors (not developers per se) like Xavi. It's the same old problem, many users only a handful actually active. Of course this problem is mitigated when you talk about sites like Joomla who's user base is probably significantly bigger than Tiki's. So it becomes a numbers game, if you have a million users and only 1% of them are active, that's still a big number. Tiki probably doesn't have a million users.

One of Tiki's strengths is in it's adaptability and customizability. Unfortunately this also leads to its weaknesses; it's incredibly complex. Documenting Tiki, all of it's features and nuances is no easy task, programmer or not. Where something like Joomla can somewhat skirt around this issue is that it offers lots of 3rd party plugins, which means that the burden of documenting falls on the 3rd party, not the developers of Joomla. Tiki takes a different approach.

I'm not making excuses for Tiki, I'm well aware of it's short-comings. However, it makes me sad because I honestly think it's actually a great application, and there is a great community spirit, albeit partially obscured to the casual observer. However, somehow Tiki rolls on. Perhaps Tiki will one day gain the popularity of the likes of Drupal and Joomla, and thus gain a small army of users upon which to call for support. I'm not really sure what the answer is, and you're right that ultimately the people developing the code need to validate the documentation.

I certainly think your comments are valid, and any project free or not has to take onboard a certain expectation of customer service levels. Believe it or not as Xavi has alluded to, things have actually improved here! So here's hoping the improvement continues, which leads to the growth of Tiki, which leads to the introduction of new developers, new ideas and a successful project.

For what it's worth I've always found the developers to be helpful when communicating with them on the Tiki IRC channel.

posts: 1630 Canada

Hello Eric,

My goal is also not to upset you but I’ll provide candid advice. I get the feeling that you have in mind to use Tiki for an important, long term project. Thus, you want a certain level of reliability/comfort before you get into it. I get that.

I suggest you change your choice of words. Tiki is free source software. You are free to use it but you are not entitled any one else’s time. Using words like “Alarming” “Die” “horrifying” will not make people want to collaborate with you.

A few reactions below.

However, I found it -literally- horrifying. Perhaps I'm accustomed to the kind of user-community support I get with Joomla, but there were several aspects of your reply that seriously bring using TikiWiki into question. So for the moment, I'm going to talk to you about process instead of my broken TikiWiki


I encourage you to read up on the Tiki Model, especially this part:
http://tiki.org/Model#Why_don_t_you_fix_improve_the_existing_features_instead_of_adding_new_ones_

, which I will eventually either discard or pay for support for. This may be open-source software, but if it's not run like a professional project, it will fail.


Tiki is a success with the current model
http://tiki.org/Model#The_Tiki_model_can_t_work

After all there are other wikis out there! I'm not trying to insult you, but what I read in your replies got me very, very worried. This may sound like a rant, but consider for a moment that it contains some very important observations:

Are you judging Tiki because of some replies you got in the forums? and because of one feature that is not working for you?

In the admin panel where you activated WebDAV, it reads: "These features are relatively new, or recently underwent major renovations. You should expect growing pains and possibly a lack of up to date documentation, as you would of a version 1.0 application"

1) The documentation is terrible.


I even added a section to cover your question :-)
http://tiki.org/Model#Documentation

2) The forums are terrible.


See my conclusion below.

3) The word FREE appears in your response twice. Either this software is free or it's not.


Tiki is a free source application. LGPL 2.1

Again, take a look at Joomla - they have it figured out. Joomla developers and users don't grudgingly carve out some time to write code or support it: they allocate time in their lives for the project and then dedicate themselves during that time so that they don't feel taken advantage of. If you volunteered at the local hospital, you wouldn't keep reminding the patients how busy you were, would you? Joomla's forums are not starved for attention. The first sign of this was that the first reply asked me - a user - to join the developer's network. Bad idea: you don't want me writing code or documenting functionality I can't understand! That's how you got the documentation you have.



Why are you antagonizing the people that are trying to help you?

I am not very familiar with the Joomla! ecosystem. However, this seems like a very broad generalization. Throughout a large community, you will see all kinds of behaviors. Some will be very active and support a module and some will just leave it do die, and anything between those two extremes.

Your example of the hospital makes no sense. If you are a volunteer at the hospital to help people with directions (for example), and someone asks you to take their blood pressure, (and you are not qualified to do that), you will try to point them in the right direction.

Community members participate the documentation, forums and mailing lists as volunteers. Tiki has tons of features, so people tend to know only a subset. They can choose to try to help you, but they may not know the answer to your specific question.

4) When a user says that they can't user your system with Windows or Mac, you don't tell them to go to Linux. This is groupware for COLLABORATION. People don't want to change all their other applications in order to collaborate. If I create a spreadsheet in Excel and want to share it with a customer, I'm not going to switch to Linux and make them switch to Linux to share it. I love Linux, but you can't make the world switch by writing TikiWiki. Your comment about never having to pay for software was alarming. It says that you don't understand business. Businesses use windows and Mac. TikiWiki *must* work with them, or die. My little business got a chance to grow because of open source software, but it still needed to follow some standards to do it.


“Alarming”? “Die”?

I see nothing alarming. He said “And sorry, no idea about win7 (never needed to pay for that software, and never tried it)” He didn’t say he didn’t think Tiki shouldn’t work with it. He said that he can’t help you because he doesn’t use that software.

I think you are over reacting here. There are tons of software which do not work on Windows and Mac and they will not “die”. And nobody ever said that the goal was that Tiki not work. Tiki has always been multi-platform. It’s browser-based software!

5) I don't think you understand why people use WebDAV.



Xavi has been pushing for years for the inclusion of WebDAV in Tiki. He participated to a previous iteration which never was added to the core http://tiki.org/TikiDavDev

So he understands very well. He wants an easier user experience for end-users. Double-click, edit, save.

Open source software offered my small business the advantages of low startup cost and great innovation. But nobody in business expects anything to be free, they just like good value. I will pay a consultant to help me get this working, but I'm going to limit his time to 2 hours to keep from trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. I'm actually worried I won't find a consultant who understand what a business needs, after reading your post.


With this attitude, perhaps no one will want to work with you!

http://tiki.org/Model#What_is_the_business_model_

I suggest to first get it going for one platform first and make sure that is OK. Then, try to figure out why it’s not working for the others. I have seen in the past that Vista needed to be patched for WebDAV to work. Not a Tiki bug but indeed a bug in MS Vista.

Again, this wasn't written to upset you, but for everyone on this project to see and think about: if you don't understand your customer - even for a free product - you won't have one in short order. It's great if this is a play project for developers, but from the web site it looks like it's aimed at being more than that, which is why I started to use it.


I think you should seriously read up on the following documents to know what you are getting into:
http://tiki.org/Model
http://tiki.org/SWOT
http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/abs/html/mags/so/2009/06/mso2009060004.htm


Now, if you indeed have a serious project and are looking to pick a platform. I suggest:

  1. Try out all the features you think you will need and make a global evaluation (vs just one feature)
  2. Compare that to other solutions (Joomla!, etc.)
  3. Pick the best one for you through a rigorous evaluation. Once you have picked it, resist the urge to change your mind or to complain.
  4. Roll your sleeves up and commit to making it work.
  5. Get in touch with the developers of those features and try to work out an arrangement to take the features to the level you need them to be. If that doesn't work, find a developer somewhere that can make it happen


That is how I run a successful business!

Best regards,

M ;-)

posts: 22

What can I say? Obviously, I'm an irredeemable wrongdoer: how *dare* I have even tried to use this released feature?

It's all my fault and I am just getting what I deserve!

E ;-)

posts: 4656 Japan

You can "dare to use" a released feature that's clearly indicated in the Features admin interface to be new, but be mindful of the note to users that's displayed there: "These features are relatively new, or recently underwent major renovations. You should expect growing pains and possibly a lack of up to date documentation, as you would of a version 1.0 application."

On a side note (and you've been giving advice here so presumably are open to it), if you have substantive points to make, people will be more likely to take them seriously if you can avoid the histrionics.

-- Gary

posts: 22

The reason Marc got a tongue-in-cheek reply is because his reply was so over-the-top arrogant, self-important, and snide. I wrote a long reply to each of his points and then realized that he couldn't hold the consciousness to receive it, and deleted all of them. Nearly every assumption he made about me was wrong and it wasn't my responsibility to disabuse him of his projections. Taking out his snide criticisms, his basic point was that I should Get Religion about Tiki.

The fact is, successful open source projects succeed without Religion. They succeed because people can actually install them and use them without hiring a consultant. Since I asked how to use WebDAV, I've tried to hire three consultants and they all told me they don't support WebDAV. So much for paid support!

What IS it with this user community? Or actually, what I've seen so far is that it's an *apologist* community, intent on clapping each other on the back for their adherence to the Religion. There don't appear to be any users here, because a user would have said "Gee, I got it to work by doing x,y,z...." My guess is there aren't any users on here probably because of the "welcome" I've gotten here which was to be criticized for asking how to use a feature and upbraided for not paying for advice which I can't get even by paying for it!

For all you apologists, go look at the Joomla forums. See how users are helped by other users and how they are transformed into champions who help other users. The Apache forums are the same way.

I had the good fortune to spend time with a marketing guru on Monday. He showed me how important reputation is to getting what you need, and how he made sure to start every interaction with people by respecting them. A wiki system also deals in reputation: people respect other poster's postings because they develop a reputation for being believable and reliable. However, despite the fancy creed of Religion about wiki I have been asked to look at, I don't see that happening here in this forum. Instead, the responders ruin their reputation by covering up for the fact that they don't know how to use a feature whose documentation predates its release, and blaming me for not being able to figure it out.

posts: 289 United States

This is an Honest-To-God (since we're talking about religion) question, not intended to be sarcastic (although it might come off that way) but...

Does Joomla have the functionality you're looking for? It would seem that you really like that software very much, so it seems like it would be a good fit for you.

I think this apologist community here is smart enough to know that Tiki isn't for everybody and we don't try to ram it down people's throats, but we do like to try to address possible negative impression of the Tiki software/community.

I'm just an average joe, with some mid to high level technical knowledge. I help out here and participate because I want to, not because I feel I have to. I like Tiki, I like what it represents and overall I feel it's a great piece of software. It sounds like you feel the same way about Joomla, so you should feel free to express your passion. This isn't a middle finger salute telling you to go elsewhere, simply that you should embrace your passions, and unfortunately for us it seems Tiki isn't one of them. No hard feelings.

posts: 22

Darkbee,
Joomla was not created to be groupware. It's really a CMS system oriented towards creating external portals first and foremost. I'd probably be very frustrated trying to get it to do something it wasn't intended to do.

What I'm trying to do here is get Tiki to do something it WAS intended to do and by using a released feature in its third minor release (5.3....) Based on my previous use of Tiki, it's not perfect but the features are usable. Xavi just showed us that WebDAV is not.

This thread is not about suitability to task, unless you take into account that the organization and infrastructure that produces Tiki is not suitable to the tasks that its product (Tiki) is advertised for. In other words, what I like about Joomla! is its user community and its impeccable organization in which people commit only to what they can commit to and then deliver what they committed to, to modern software standards. Joomla's core team take their responsibilities seriously and didn't take them on without serious reflection, so they don't complain when people ask them for what would reasonably be expected of them (like working code on a third minor release.)

Think your comment, "I'm just an average joe, with some mid to high level technical knowledge. I help out here and participate because I want to, not because I feel I have to" really sums up why I (and I presume other users) am so frustrated. When you write code for an OS project, you must assume that someone will use it. It's a gift to them. Gifts come with two responsibilities: 1) The gift must have some value to the recipient or else they will wonder what your real motives are and 2) They come with no expectation of return. In other words, giving a gift is a responsibility not to be taken lightly. Once you give a gift you DO "have to" stand behind it, or risk losing your reputation as a giver. Anything else is self-delusion in which you convince yourself you're a "good guy" but actually generate the opposite impression. If your "gift" is simply an invitation to spend very late nights trying to figure out how to use what you gave with no documentation, that is no gift, more like a curse wrapped in a bow-tie. It's even less a gift when your cohorts beat up on the recipient of the gift for trying to get help on how to use it. And finally, I've been told to update the documentation myself: how crazy is that? Who would want a list of everything I tried which didn't work because I didn't know what was actually supposed to work? My contribution could be to clarify a set of instructions that DID work, or write up a set of instructions after the person who wrote the code showed me how to get it to work. But at this point, neither has happened.

You asked me to embrace my passions. I am. My passion is impeccability - meaning running my life and company in a way that doesn't create unnecessary suffering or karma. Unfortunately, being impeccable also means you end up calling others on their unimpeccability, since not doing so wouldn't honor yourself. So I ask you to embrace your passion. If you can't commit to supporting the code you write for an OS project, then your passion isn't contributing to an OS project... perhaps it's just noodling around with software and seeing what it can do.

posts: 7

As your passion is impeccability, I'd like to help you improving on that area.

When asking for help, you did not:
- State which version of tiki you were running (corrected that later in a post stating, you use 5.3)
- State on which WebServer (Apache/IIS) it runs
- Post the relevant error message from your error log (You mentioned a 500 server error later)

These are three things you might want to improve to achieve your goal of impeccability. Another minor thing is to adapt to the people you are communicating with. Our preferred ways are the mailing list and the IRC channel. If there is nothing in the forums or you're not satisfied with what you find, use those other ways of communication.

I can tell you, what I did to get webdav working on windows 7:
a) I use tiki 6.x in my test environment running on an apache server with a lot of modules and php with a lot of modules active
b) I activated the webdav feature
c) I Installed BitKinex and told it to open http://testserver.local:80/tiki-webdav.php/
d) I installed Trail Mix and klicked on the Trail-Mix/Online Files Menu. On the page I added a Webdav Server with the above URL and it worked again

posts: 289 United States

I think your comparison with Joomla is a little unfair, they have an entire foundation backing them (OpenSourceMatters), Tiki does not to the best of my knowledge.

It's a bit like saying why does K-Meleon web browser suck compared to Firefox. They are completely different in structure and organization, yet they are both open source (and Firefox again has a massive organization backing it). I could reel off dozens of examples, Puppy Linux versus Ubuntu is another off of the top of my head.

It seems like your expectations of open source software are very lofty and focused only at the very narrow end of the spectrum. By your definition single-user (or very small) open source projects should just simply not exist unless the person/s producing them is dedicated to the project for the vast majority of his/her time (ignoring the fact that he/she somehow has to make a living). In all honesty, it seems like you want the open source price tag with the commercial level of support and service. That doesn't seem very reasonable, no one here is paid that I'm aware of.

I utterly disagree with your notion of gift-giving. I never receive a gift with the expectation that the giver somehow owes me. If they were nice enough to give me a gift in the first place then they certainly don't owe me diddly squat. They chose to give me a gift and I chose to receive it. If I don't like/want it, I simply stop using it or pass it on to someone that can make use of it. I think in reality your gift-giving analogy is not really appropriate here. Yes, it's nice that some people are willing to work on software for free and make it available for the general public to use, but they are not knocking on your door saying here enovikoff, our gift to you (and btw you WILL use it or else).

To get back on track, nobody disagrees with you in principle (I don't think), of course we'd all like perfect documentation and perfect code that runs flawlessly, but that isn't the nature of open source. It isn't even the nature of commercial software. Windows is not without bugs and flaws, so why should your expectation be any higher of a project that runs without any (or little) notion of financial compensation to its developers?

EDIT: BTW, I haven't written a line of code for this project. I have however updated some of the documentation when I found it to be lacking, in the hopes that someone else wouldn't have to suffer the same pains I did.

posts: 22

This forum doesn't seem to be operating correctly so when I press "reply" it makes it look like I'm replying to an article I didn't intend to reply to.

In any event, I think your points about gift giving are missing the big picture. I'll try another example: suppose you bake a chicken pot-pie and then take it to a potluck dinner. However, you were distracted in preparing it (perhaps you were coding for Tiki Wiki?) and didn't observe proper kitchen process, causing the chicken to become overgrown with salmonella.

The people at the party weren't obliged to eat your pot-pie, but by placing it on the table and announcing that it was there for them to consume, you became responsible for their getting very sick from eating it. Your "gift" had a responsibility associated with it. And legally, those people could sue you for making them sick. On the gift-giver's side, I presume that you would never allow such an oversight to occur because you felt that responsibility and had a genuine desire to offer something of value to the people at the party.

What you wrote made it sound like, with respect to this analogy, you had no responsibility for cooking a safe and healthy pot pie because the people at the party a) had the choice not to eat it since they didn't know it's characteristics and b) they didn't pay for it.

While users of Tiki Wiki can't sue for their frustration and wasted time, they can complain, give the project a bad reputation, or walk away without taking the time to explain these principles to the principals :-)

Windows is not without bugs and flaws, so why should your expectation be any higher of a project that runs without any (or little) notion of financial compensation to its developers?

Actually, my expectations are *higher*. Windows' flaws COME from the the expectation of financial compensation: Microsoft is trying to destroy WebDAV BECAUSE it wants to lock people into its own solution. That's why we all "hate" Microsoft. Open Source offers the possibility that things can just be done "right" because there is no power manipulation. Instead, you are arguing that it's OK to do things poorly because you don't have a power manipulation game you can play. Open Source is a heart-centered activity, Microsoft is not. To use my example above, a heart-centered person is actually caring about the people he's cooking his pot-pie for as he does it, which is why he cooks the best pie he can.

In all honesty, it seems like you want the open source price tag with the commercial level of support and service. That doesn't seem very reasonable, no one here is paid that I'm aware of.

Back to the money again. I actually can be found stating in here that I'm looking for good value, not free stuff. Free is wonderful for evaluations and POCs and getting a newfound business off the ground, but money is a very useful way to establish a relationship between a consumer and provider of a service. My business makes (some) money, so why wouldn't I want to share it with someone who enables that? Going back to Joomla, everyone who is noted on that project as a deep contributor makes money from Joomla, but they do it *separately* from the contribution they make to the project. It's a higher - almost spiritual - relationship between their passion and their income: they contribute without thought of reward, and reward comes without requiring the contribution because they have developed a reputation for knowing and loving the product, so people come to them for paid services. They have made the leap from having it be a hobby to a business by having faith that their reputation will bring them a reward. The result is a community of service providers who all are very reputable and admirable. As long as this is a hobby where the needs of users become an unpaid irritation, you can't develop the reputation to get people to pay for your time. You are embodying the classic double-bind of OS development; many of them have transcended it. And it's not an either-or: they all got into it by doing just a tiny bit very well, and leveraging the reputation they got from doing that, rather than trying to do a lot, poorly.

posts: 3665 United States

I'll weigh in here.... and my background is in end-user support, usability, UX, etc.

There are some important points that I'd like to make:

1. Tiki is unlike any other project (open source or otherwise). Other projects (such as Joomla) have a top-down formalized structure. Tiki is completely opposite: it is bottom-up. There's no one "in charge" and no formal process. Everyone/anyone can do just about anything they want (regarding code, features, doc, etc.). You might enjoy reading [http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/abs/html|"A Process That Is Not(external link)"[ by Hakan Erdogmus, published in the November/December 2009 (Vol. 26, No. 6) issue of IEEE Software magazine for some background.

2. As a result of #1, Tiki is very developer-centric (especially in terms of doc and support). This is starting to change as more and more "non-Tiki developers" (such as yourself) join the community. Some Tiki-ers (such as myself) have produced end-user docs aimed at the non-Tiki developer. There are some nice articles on WikiHow that you might want to review, in addition to my Tiki for Dummies Smarties and Tiki Essentials guides.

3. As a result of #2, Tiki is far less "polished" then you may be used to, a lot of time the emphasis is simply on getting the feature stable. However, this has changed in recent releases, the the addition of the Quality team, an emphasis on usabliity, etc. Again, if you think something needs improvement, you're encouraged (see #1) to make the change.

4. End-users (such as yourself) do have an expectation for things to "just work" and I sympathize with your experiences with WebDAV. It is a fairly new feature so I'm sure it isn't at 100% just yet, as a result of #3. I experienced much of your frustration when I joined the community. And it is what led me to write Smarties, and make UI changes, and work on website organziation, etc.

5. And finally, Tiki unlike Joomla emphasizes its community aspect. We (and now, you too!) are Tiki. Unlike Joomla (where a very small percentage of folks who run a Joomla-powered website or a Wordpress-blog are actively involved in the community and development) with Tiki it is the opposite. Anyone can help improve the docs (even just to fix a typo. Anyone can update the code (again, even just small tweaks are appreciated). Unlike Joomla or Wordpress, where 99.99% of its "users" stay silent, Tiki requires that the user community take a active role. Unless someone does something, no one does anything.


Maybe Tiki isn't for you.... maybe it is. If it is, I encourage you join a Tiki Team and get involved. I don't know what your background is, but there are teams beyond simply coding... Maybe you're a lawyer and want to help on the Legal team. Or maybe you're an artist and want to help on the Themes team. Or maybe you're a hardware guru and want to help on the Infrastructure team. Or maybe you're bilingual and want to help on the i18n team.

Anyway hopefully this has helped explain some things. Tiki is different from everything else, and as a result, it may take a different kind of person to become comfortable with the community.


HTH,

- Rick | My Tiki Blog | My Tiki UserPage
Need more help? Try Tiki for Dummies Smarties: A beginner's guide.
New: Tiki Essentials: What all Smarties need to know about Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware.

posts: 22

Other projects (such as Joomla) have a top-down formalized structure. Tiki is completely opposite: it is bottom-up. There's no one "in charge" and no formal process. Everyone/anyone can do just about anything they want (regarding code, features, doc, etc.). You might enjoy reading [http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/abs/html|"A Process That Is Not(external link)"[ by Hakan Erdogmus, published in the November/December 2009 (Vol. 26, No. 6) issue of IEEE Software magazine for some background.

As I have some familiarity with the Joomla process, I have to disagree with your statement that it's "top-down." It may look that way because there is structure associated with it, but it's actually a ring structure with defined concentric rings that decreasing commitment levels and process responsibility as you go out, but increasing acceptance of structure from the inner rings. The people in each ring are equals. This matches their personal ability and desire to commit to contributing. I don't know if they have written an IEEE paper about it, but it's quite effective.

As a long-time project manager and process-improvement consultant, I have yet to see software successfully created to be reliable and usable without rigorous process, even though there are a large variety of processes out there which work. Programmers would love to see the law of cause and effect suspended!

posts: 4656 Japan
As a long-time project manager and process-improvement consultant, I have yet to see software successfully created to be reliable and usable without rigorous process, even though there are a large variety of processes out there which work. Programmers would love to see the law of cause and effect suspended!


Just to clarify, the Tiki project does have de facto peer review for code commits and an explicit Quality Team that checks commits that are proposed for inclusion in the branch after the feature freeze as it nears release. Adding code isn't a complete free for all. These are the proofreaders and editors in the wiki way of code development, so to speak. But the basic attitude is that in principle the project is open to developers to add or improve a feature by committing code directly (rather than submitting patches to insiders) and therefore influence the direction of the project themselves. In this sense direction is bottom-up. Probably Tiki as multipurpose software is better suited to this approach than more or less single-focus software where the development focus is more on refinement than expansion. No laws of physics are broken, just applied differently.

Incidentally, I see that my reply followed your post directly, as expected; I don't know what happened that prompted your remark that the forum wasn't working correctly in this regard. Something to keep an eye on, at least, apparently.

-- Gary

posts: 1817 Catalan Countries
Thanks Marc for taking the time for such a long and detailed response. And for explaining things from me and my interests/knowledge in WebDAV (as end user) that I was lazy to say :-)

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