I think part of the reason people keep asking for a roadmap or a release date (which is annoying, I know) is because there is no up-to-date page on the bbPress site with that information. Open source projects especially survive on public support and communication.

So how about this: what if Sam or CK posted a quick two-minute update each month to the blog about progress that’s being made and what still remains to do? I don’t mean alpha announcements or set-in-stone deadlines — more of a this-is-what-we’re-working-on bit, or talking about what features you’d like to see in a 1.0 final. That might even motivate other coders to step up and help, and make everyone else feel like we’re included in it.

I bet the time it takes to do that will save you hours of headaches responding to nagging questions from your fans.

We don’t care if a feature slips or things get delayed, as long as communications are still there. We’re a forgiving bunch.

Open source projects thrive when they have a central figure communicating regularly with people and keeping everyone in the loop.

This is not a complaint. I know you guys are working very hard!

[@feastoffools Member 15 years, 8 months ago]

What a wonderful suggestion!

[@_ck_ Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

To be clear I’m not a bbPress developer. I just volunteer here.

I’m an independent plugin developer. I have no association with Automattic.

Sam and Michael are the official developers and I for one would rather not see them distracted with having to do public relations, unless of course they actually want to.

If you want to know instantly when there are changes to bbPress at the development level, either subscribe to the Trac RSS or to the bbDev mailing list.

https://lists.bbpress.org/mailman/listinfo/bb-trac (announcements only from Trac)

https://lists.bbpress.org/mailman/listinfo/bbdev (for humans but inactive lately)

In it’s current state, bbPress is really for “do it yourself-ers”.

If you don’t know PHP or CSS at all, right now it’s probably not for you.

A blog isn’t going to stop questions, it’s only going to create more questions and more distractions for Sam and Michael and then you’ll get mad when they don’t answer the questions in a timely manner.

[@kevinjohngallagher Member 15 years, 8 months ago]

Hi _ck_,

I’m going to disagree with you a little here and suggest that there’s a happy medium between giving us some information and “having to do public relations”.

You give BBpress so much, and obviously have some direct communication with the development team, that maybe you cant see what it’s like for the rest of us. Sam pops up here once every 3 weeks and does one of 5 things:

1) Comments on your posts

2) Agrees with something you’ve posted

3) Tells us he’s been pulled from BBpress to work on something else and he’ll be back in a bit

Even knowing PHP and CSS, having nothing filter down from the BBpress team makes it very difficult. We only hear about things when YOU tell them to us, which is why people think you’re a BBpress developer. As i have said here before, when i came back to BBpress in October i did not know about Sam until Christmas time’s Facebook page creation debacle. Heck, i didn’t even know about Michael until i read your post 3 minutes ago (welcome to the team Michael).

A blog isn’t going to stop questions,

But _ck_, there is a blog already! It’s only had 6 posts in 8 months though, which is what leads to alot of questions. Trac is so hideously out of date that it leads to release date questions (which you then get annoyed about having to answer all the time) . The information on About, Documentation and Blog are either hideously out of date or flat out wrong.

We’re not asking Sam (and Michael) to stop working on BBpress, or to use their own free time to do “public relations” with us. But thats not to say that having no communication is a good thing either; especially as there is alot of mis-information floatng around the BBpress website.

As the original poster said: “a quick two-minute update each month to the blog about progress that’s being made and what still remains to do”.

In my opinion, a “two minute update” once a month, is not someone asking for the BBpress team to be “distracted with having to do public relations”. Maybe a happy medium can be reached?

[@_ck_ Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

Yes, you are asking too much, it’s free software, there’s not even a 1.0 final yet.

Michael was working on bbPress before Sam joined Automattic, he has been working on other Automattic projects for the past few months and recently started working on bbPress again.

Name the current developers of WordPress, I suspect most people can’t – the point is that it doesn’t matter to most people.

Note that I don’t have some special insight on bbPress activity – Michael and Sam don’t tell me secrets and hide them from everyone else. I just go and read stuff, all the notes in the code, I watch trac updates, I read the history in bbDev.

If you don’t know what I know about bbPress it just means you are lazier than me and don’t want to bother reading it all and just want it spoon-fed to you. In which case, you seriously need to find other software that has reach maturity, is well documented and the developers twitter every darn day what they do. There are DOZENS of forum programs. Many of them have been integrated with WordPress on some level. Find another solution.

Again, if you are planning your website, project, etc. around the day-to-day, week-to-week or even month-to-month improvements in bbPress development you are using the wrong program. bbPress is pre-release, it is not final, it is not gold. If you need a timetable, you are using the wrong program.

If you are using bbPress now you are an early-adopter. Early adopters have to be do-it-yourself-ers who figure things out for themselves and/or don’t have timetables.

I cannot stress this enough, if you cannot deal with how bbPress is manged, and didn’t like it last month or the month before, you may have noticed nothing has changed to meet your desires. Please, please, please find other software and stop posting to the forums with this. Stop making YOUR need for timetables everyone else’s priority. Stop acting like you are entitled to special attention and time above the other thousands of bbPress users. Uninstall bbPress and switch to something else.

[@kevinjohngallagher Member 15 years, 8 months ago]

Wow _ck_,

If you don’t know what I know about bbPress it just means you are lazier than me

In honesty _ck_, do you believe that to be true?

Thats a very very sweeping statement and a massive generalisation. You’ve been involved with BBpress longer than alot of people here, You’re also a plugin developer and a moderator, and the belief is that if they don’t have your years of knowledge and experience then they are lazy?

If you are using bbPress now you are an early-adopter. Early adopters have to be do-it-yourself-ers who figure things out for themselves and/or don’t have timetables.

Agreed. Infact, no-one is arguing that point.

All the original poster suggested was that a “two minute update” once a month would greatly help him and others in the community to know where BBpress is going. Truly, i don’t think that should warrant another _ck_ “leave BBpress now” rant, especially as he has posted it in the “Requests and Feedback” section.

[@_ck_ Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

My rant was not for richcon but for you kevin.

[@dragunoff Member 15 years, 8 months ago]

I also support the suggestion for a blog/bettter communication.

Because now bbPress looks somewhat abondoned. I’m talking about people involved in the project to some degree but to an outside observer or a new user. People would like to know how the project is going and whether it could meet their needs in future versions without digging into the forums or Trac.

I came to bbPress because it is related to WordPress and shares many similarities (templates, plugins, etc.). I believe many others do that for the same reason. Using another forum platform I would have to learn from scratch.

[@_ck_ Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

bbPress is certainly not abandoned. It’s not going away.

It’s paid for by a company with over a million dollars in funding.

It’s just not developing fast enough for some people and that minority is unfortunately the most vocal.

I think the biggest problem is people start using WordPress when it’s version 2.5 or newer and somehow they figure it’s always had all those features so they see bbPress by the same people and figure it must be as developed and managed like that.

WordPress was nearly exactly like this until version 2.0

I’ve suggested before that bbPress will get more attention once Matt finds a way to monetize it like WordPress.com did for WordPress.

There will likely be a few small releases of improvements to 1.0 and bug fixes for 0.9 this year (with one likely in April), but there will not be anything major in 2009 IMHO. If Sam or Michael asked me for my opinion I would suggest that 1.0 final should not be released in 2009, it’s just not ready and if you think people are complaining now, just wait.

To put it another way, if bbPress doesn’t have the feature you want right now and you aren’t willing/able to write it yourself, don’t start thinking it’s going to magically appear in 2009.

Of course I could be completely wrong and Matt will suddenly take a dozen of his WordPress developers and put them onto bbPress next month – but do you think that is realistic?

[@adeboy Member 15 years, 8 months ago]

I would have thought Automattic could monetize BBPress in the same way the make money from WordPress, there’s obviously a need for blogs and forums to be combined and people will pay for hosted versions.

Its great to get new WP features, but its now a well developed software and I think there’s much more scope for growth with BBpress. Once you link them together its very good and it solves a lot of the Profile customisation problems you get in WP. The alpha works fine as long as you don’t want too much from it and I don’t get how they don’t want to exploit that much more

[@_ck_ Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

Oh they will eventually monetize bbPress, it’s just that it hasn’t been and probably won’t be profitable for them even this year. Hence it wasn’t the priority some people want it to be.

[@swaymedia Member 15 years, 8 months ago]

personally i think CK should stop helping out, it will at least put pressure on the Millionaires of Auttomatic to hire a proper Dev Team.

Right now where all being guinea pigs, being tested out… if we all voice our concerns… The will at least come out of “Target Audience Test Mode” and get the product finally going properly.

[@_ck_ Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

Millions in funding does not a millionaire make. I think most of it is used to secure payroll at Automattic because full-time employees are expensive for a company.

The answer is not for me to help less, the answer is for others to be more patient or set realistic priorities/goals (or start contributing to the community themselves).

If someone wants a blog about bbPress, they should seriously make one themselves. You don’t have to be a coder to research bbPress’s history and request interviews with the dev team and Matt.

[@bruinfelix Member 15 years, 8 months ago]

If one ‘opensource’ project has a lack of communications, then bbPress, may take a look at his self