Re: Please bring the conference news back

Hello Hannes— On 2/8/07, Hannes Magnusson <hannes.magnusson@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Marco 1. While the fact that conference announcements appeared on php.netdidn't amount to an endorsement, they certainly indicated that the PHP Group considered them relevant to the community. Removing them abruptly and with no explanation signals a shift in policy which, in my opinion, does not jive with reality. To the outsider, the removal could well mean that the people who run php.net no longer consider conferences useful, relevant or important to the community—and that is not what I have heard from the people I have actually spoken to. This simply is not true. I consider the announcements that important that they deserve their own dedicated page where they can live happily among all other PHP events around the world, be it a quick coffee at the Daily Dose Coffee House and Bar or a whole week of lectures.

Really? The rest of your e-mail clearly contradicts this statement. In fact, you consider the announcements to be such a nuisance that you want to move them to another place. These events have however absolutely nothing to do with php.net and are

nowhere near the importance of a real news entry from php.net.

I disagree; and, at a very minimum, it is not up to you to decide what does and does not belong to the main page. Has it occurred to you that perhaps people read the homepage *precisely* because they get news other than release announcements? Being so arrogant to add a 'call for paper' announcement as a top entry

25hours after the release of PHP 5.2.0 is quite an accomplishment btw...

So you are essentially condemning an entire group of people to oblivion based on what one person has done? These announcements got so overwhelming that it was almost pointless adding

any php.net related entry on there cause within a week there would be two new announcements making the real php.net related entry old and not as noticeable. The frontpage has been treated as conference holders private commercial ground for long enough. It is time for php.net to take the control back and give PHP related events their own dedicated page to keep their information on. It is a win win situation. Those who care about php.net news will check the frontpage, those who want to know whats is going on in the world of PHP events will check the event schedule and the conference page.

Please do not make the mistake to think that you are representative of the entire php.net readership. You are not. Neither am I. The difference is that you are dismissing my point of view—and presumably the point of view of other people—without giving me any consideration. CVS karma comes with a certain amount of responsibility; I do not have any CVS karma, and respect the fact that I need to make my point and convince those who do that I am right—or not, but at least there should be an opportunity for all those who are directly affected by a decision to speak up. You have karma, and completely ignored any reasonable process.

2. Removing all the announcements also means that calls for papers are no longer visible at all. This deprives the entire community of an opportunity to make their voices heard, and to make an impact on the PHP world. Ultimately, this damages PHP, simply because there is less opportunity to promote new ideas. They were moved. Not removed. How exactly is this giving anyone less opportunity to promote new ideas? I see this a _better_ opportunity. We could even create a specific section for call for papers on php.net/conferences in the future (on the right side maybe?)

This is a meaningless statement; for all intents and purposes, they were removed, not moved. People who read the news through the RSS feed will no longer see them. Those who are *looking* for conferences will have a really hard time finding the tiny link at the top-right. Lets see how keeping them in between will workout. I can't however imagine

how this could be a problem as they have been surrounded with lot of other things in the past.

This is akin to someone coming in to your office and saying "let's fire Hannes and see how that works out." Would you like that to happen to you?

3. The list of upcoming conferences currently shown in the right-hand side bar is completely useless. All the three conferences listed on the site [snip]

Is your conference on the list?

By clicking on a item on it you get a calendar listing what is happening in the world of PHP events (conferences, user groups & training). This is the perfect place to pick an event at your liking that fits your schedule. php.net/cal.php && php.net/conferences are your friends, not the enemy.

Indeed, as they are set up now, they are useless. I have already explained why, and I beg you to take my word for it—I'm the one who runs these things, remember? I'd like to think that after eight conferences I have an idea of how they work.

4. There are now two news items on the main page of php.net—one is from the beginning of November, and the other from a few days go. Even with an announcement coming about a 5.2.1 release and an explanation of what happened to the conference announcements (which will eventually fall off of the main page), that gives the impression that very little happened in PHP land since last fall. This is obviously not true—but you have to have intimate knowledge of the going ons of the platform to know it. 5. Conference announcements have also disappeared from the RSS feed. I am not sure how many people rely on it to get their PHP news, but they are now cut off from knowledge of these events. At this moment there is no feed for conference announcements, but there will be soon enough.

Again, what does this mean? Soon enough for whom?

6. There is a difference between desire for action and impulsiveness. I understand and appreciate that discussing things to death is not constructive; however, "we talked about it on IRC for three hours" is not a good justification for such a significant and far-reaching change. Allowing everyone to voice their opinion—karma or no karma—before making significant decisions has always been the norm. After each announcement this is discussed, unofficially though. The last entry was the last straw for me. I started to consider these announcements as spam. Something _had_ to be done. I asked quickly around and did not find anyone who disagreed. How unpopular it may have been with conference planers I took it upon myself to regain the control of the frontpage and move all these events onto their own page for everyone interested to see.

This is not true. I was on IRC, and there were objections—and this is a fact, not my personal opinion. Those who don't care, these announcements will not bother again.

Those who care, these announcements are easily (if not more) available. No release announcements. No news about the work from the doc team. Nothing will now get in conference announcement way again.

Wonderful; too bad nobody will care, either. Why, instead of making these changes, don't we revert back to the way things were and then look at how we can make all these news coexist without encroaching on each other? That seems like a level-headed approach to solving the problem. Marco -- Marco Tabini php|architect Phone: +1 (416) 630-6202 x.666 Fax: +1 (416) 630-5057 Web: http://www.phparch.com