Question2Answer roadmap

Question

Question2Answer roadmap

asked Nov 27, 2013 in Q2A Core by maxjtechno

Is there a place where you can know the release dates (roughly speaking) of the next q2a versions ?

And possibly where you can see which new features will be added and which bugs will be fixed ?

Here ?

I've seen some old posts about the 1.5 roadmap, but if I'm not wrong, at the moment, nothing is known about the next version...

Am I wrong ?

About the "place", if there is not one, why not use github basic issue tracking and milestones management ?

Or more advanced tools such as jira ? (that if I'm not wrong is free for open source projects...)

It would not be bad to have an official place where to track all feature requests, issues, and milestones...

Even if I agree with the fact that it's an additional overhead.....

Q2A version: 1.6.2

commented Nov 28, 2013 by Sebastiano Pereiro

commented Nov 28, 2013 by Funrunna

1 Answer

offline · Answer 1 · 2013-11-29T11:14:06+0000

answered Nov 29, 2013 by offline
edited Nov 29, 2013 by offline

Well, this issue brings up other issues :o)

From my 2 years experience with q2a and using this forum here over and over again, being in PM-contact with the main developer regularly I conclude, by Nov 2013:

the q2a core is only developed by Gideon Greenspan, see user gidgreen
q2a is not his main project so he is spending his "free time" to bring q2a further
he tries to help by answering recent questions from time to time
but as he is alone he cannot manage all requests (which brings disappointment to some dev/users)
that is why I would suggest to build a developers team soon
however, documentation is not easy for beginners, I still don't know how the core really works
but nevertheless, I learnt to handle the q2a engine (see my plugins)
Scott and NoahY are really good plugin developers and could help with the core as well (however, NoahY seems to not be active for some months)
jatin.soni arrived last year as well, and is also passionate about q2a (see q2amarket.com), as well as sama55 who also develops plugins
and there a lot of other developers coming to the forum (and leaving again)

This is just a 100 % "writing down" from experience and ideas.

The requested roadmap would be great, of course, but I think gidgreen will not be able to do it. Especially if he does it he could be blamed by others, why he did not solve bugs x and y in time etc. Kind of stress.

I am eager to use the next 1.6.3 for another project, finding bugs, and still improving things. But I have no idea when he will release it.

So, for now and for the recent future, I think this will not change. On the other hand, I like to be surprised =) but at least I would see a bug list on github. The bug tag here in this forum that gidgreen asks developers to use is just not powerful enough (solved bugs are not marked and appear still open).

My two cents, hope they help.
Kai

PS: 3 weeks ago I sent gidgreen all my core hacks, about 30 to 40. It might be (at least I hope) that he is implementing most of them into q2a. The hacks make things easier, esp. usability of the forum. Maybe this is the reason why the next release takes longer.

commented Nov 30, 2013 by maxjtechno
edited Nov 30, 2013 by maxjtechno

> the q2a core is only developed by Gideon Greenspan, see user gidgreen
> q2a is not his main project so he is spending his "free time" to bring q2a further

so my "doubts" are justified....
I wrote this question since, in 2 months of activity with q2a, I'm already having difficulties in managing my q2a instance (full of hacks) and trying to understand what's happening in the product evolution (about which I've actually no idea.... nor about features, nor about bug fixings, nor about release dates).

> but as he is alone he cannot manage all requests (which brings disappointment to some dev/users)
> that is why I would suggest to build a developers team soon

I think *this is the solution*.
A distributed development and management of the core.
Obvioulsy with gidgreen as the "master" supervisor.
The development can be accelerated, bug and feature requests could be tracked and eventually promoted, macro-dates could be planned.
I think that this could help a lot the product too.
Because, as you write too, I think that many developers/users come here, but also go away after some time.
I think they come here because the product is very attractive (personally I'm enthusiast about it), but it looks like there is something still lacking in it (I'm not talking of sw quality).

> This is just a 100 % "writing down" from experience and ideas.

You have said the right word...
I think q2a needs to be a bit more "engineered" (see distributed development and management)

> The requested roadmap would be great, of course, but I think gidgreen will not be able to do it. Especially if he does it he could be blamed by others, why he did not solve bugs x and y in time etc. Kind of stress.

----> distributed development and management of the core....

> So, for now and for the recent future, I think this will not change. On the other hand, I like to be surprised =) but at least I would see a bug list on github. The bug tag here in this forum that gidgreen asks developers to use is just not powerful enough (solved bugs are not marked and appear still open)

I agree, this q2a website should be only a place where to have discussions/general questions....
From here should then arise bugs, features, ideas....

> PS: 3 weeks ago I sent gidgreen all my core hacks, about 30 to 40. It might be (at least I hope) that he is implementing most of them into q2a. The hacks make things easier, esp. usability of the forum. Maybe this is the reason why the next release takes longer.

You confirm to me that you do not either know what's actually happening .... :-)

@gidgreen
I'd like to specify that I do not want to do negative criticism, as I said I'm enthusiast about the product

commented Nov 30, 2013 by Waterfr Villa

commented Dec 2, 2013 by gidgreen

Hi Kai and others. Your analysis is generally correct. Q2A is something I work on in my spare time. Sometimes I have more and sometimes less. Unfortunately at the moment it is not very much because I am working hard on a major new (unrelated) product to be released early 2014. So if it should become a community developed product (and I can see the logic) I will not be able to reliably manage this, because it would need my constant attention to work with many developers, assess pull requests, discuss new features, etc... But often that attention will not be available.

The best answer I can suggest is to simply fork the project, and create a community-developed spinoff under a different name. This is allowed under the GPL. It would not upset me at all and would have my blessing (and a link!) I would continue developing the "original Q2A" as and when I have time. But this fork could then adopt a life of its own, however you and others who are involved would want to see fit. This happens all the time in open source projects and is a healthy thing.

commented Dec 2, 2013 by maxjtechno
edited Dec 2, 2013 by maxjtechno

Hello gidgreen,
why not give a try do a distributed development model on the "original" q2a.
Github has an "organization" approach (I post the link, but you'll know it already : https://github.com/blog/674-introducing-organizations , free for public open source projects) that allows to have a project owner (you) and a team of "mantainers" with push-pull permissions that "help" the owner in managing the master. It's a model adopted in many successful open source projects (such as html5 boilerplates, twitter bootstrap, etc etc...). You can decide who the mantainers are, they'll do the work for you or with you. And if things won't work, you could always remove them from the team and rollback all the changes.
I have some doubts that forking is the right solution for q2a success....
I think instead that it could take some "damage" to the original project (at leasts it creates "confusion") and it could not give benefits, in the long term, to the forked project and to the whole q2a community (now compact).
I would give a try to the "maintainers", I think that 2 or 3 of them can be found directly here.....
You can always go back to the "old" model whenever you want.
I think that the q2a product will benefit of it, the users will benefit of it, and the markets that are emerging and growing up around q2a (themes sellers, plugins sellers, custom services sellers) would also benefit about it, because there is a constantly evolved core, that attracts more and more users.
I would give it a try..... you could always rollback at any time...

commented Dec 2, 2013 by gidgreen

commented Dec 3, 2013 by offline

commented Dec 3, 2013 by gidgreen

Kai, I appreciate the offer, but the issue is that the people who are managing the community project have to be very experienced programmers, and as you say you are still learning a lot about programming.

Apart from bugs which can slip in, there are issues of ensuring that any architectural changes make sense in the big picture, and also of watching out for security problems, which are often invisible until someone nasty discovers them and starts exploiting them. For comparison here is a list of recent WordPress vulnerabilities:

http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-2337/product_id-4096/

Now you could say that WordPress is very successful, so no one cares about the vulnerabilities, but I would say that there is a core WordPress team which is constantly responding to these issues quickly and releasing updates. While Q2A is popular enough, it is nothing like on the scale of WordPress :)

commented Dec 3, 2013 by offline

commented Dec 3, 2013 by maxjtechno

commented Dec 3, 2013 by offline

commented Dec 3, 2013 by q2amarket
edited Dec 3, 2013 by q2amarket

Hello to all involved in this conversation...

I am agree with Gideon and all others too. Q2A is really good script and it should not get down just because of time limits.

I am sure there are many Q2A users running their website and not just running but running well and may generating revenue. In this situation this discussion can loose trust from them.

So now it is our responsibility (developers who involved in core Q2A) to take some responsibilities on our shoulder so Gideon can just watch about the quality control and other major aspects. That's how we can still continue with feature updates and bug fixes.

I am ready to take responsibility but again it is not one man job to keep things up to date all the time, otherwise one day it would happen same like now.

Solution:
As Gideon said let's make a fork and get started but I would request to Gideon do not completely leave this project as we all need you, after all you are the God Father of Q2A :)

I will try to find and get back to you folks soon with something practically possible proposal.

EDIT:

BTW, it may not possible to make this happen with single handed. Also may not possible that anyone who has all skills. But if we can make a group. Like 1-2 great PHP devs, 1-2 great UI/UX designer etc.. than we can continue this in great way..

commented Dec 3, 2013 by sama55

commented Dec 4, 2013 by ProThoughts

commented Dec 4, 2013 by maxjtechno

First of all I would thank ProThoughts for giving his opinion to this post and for his proposal.
I would like to remark that the main point of my post is the general situation of the product from a "management" point of view.
I see many people around this site posting bugs, requesting new features, discussing, etc. etc... , and I do not know if all of these requests are "handled" or not by who is responsible of the site. Maybe all of them are handled. But I do not know. Since there is no official issue management and no tracking.
And even if they are handled, I do not know when they'll be released, because there is no official roadmap.
To be sincere sometimes I feel like being in a very crowded community but without an official "voice".
I have known that the main (unique) developer (gideon) is very busy. Ok.
So, reading also some answers above, I made a proposal of creating a sort of more collaboration, in the management and in the development of the product, as the word "community" implies.
Because as a user I cannot say I'm satisfied : and I'm not talking of the quality of the product (of which I'm enthusiast, as I wrote).
That's my opinion.

commented Dec 4, 2013 by ProThoughts

commented Dec 5, 2013 by q2amarket

According to me the best way to rid off this issue is Gideon himself make a team here and than can distributes work as per the skills.

Also we need few moderators to run and keep this board clean and helping. However currently we all are trying to help each other but sometimes we required answers from core developers.

I understand it is not possible for Gideon and anyone to define the milestone single handed. Since most of the developers are involved in Q2A as a least priority and therefore It is practically difficult.

Once we have a team than Gideon and we can define the milestone and the tasks for everyone as well. We can dedicated some weekly hours for this and So Q2A will get on the way...

I also agree to have some bug report section where we can track the bugs and fixes. Also we should have discussion board and so we can keep this board only for Q2A question and answer. Till Gideon get back to us with his opinion or decision, I have just started board here http://developers.q2amarket.com where we can simply discuss about Q2A stuffs..Once Gideon finalized something and if he is ready than we can move this board to Q2A site hopefully. I have to create some section but will be done in couple of days. So if you are a developers or follower than I would encourage you to get involved in discussion over there.

Hopping to hear from Gideon soon.. :)

commented Dec 5, 2013 by gidgreen

commented Dec 6, 2013 by q2amarket

commented Dec 7, 2013 by Scott

I'm a bit late to the party here, but just wanted to contribute my thoughts.

I would be happy to contribute to Q2A and/or manage it, whether to the original core app or a community fork. The former could work easily by setting up a dev branch on the github repo then allowing write access to the manager (who also decides whether to accept pull requests).

I am not entirely convinced about a community fork. As maxj stated above, it could cause confusion for users which version to install. Are our community changes going to make it back into the original Q2A? I have plenty of ideas on changes that could be made and the direction in which Q2A could/should go, what if Gideon disagrees? What happens when Gideon makes updates to Q2A, are the two projects going to end up drifting further and further apart?

I'm sure this can work, but I'd need to know what role Gideon would be playing before diving in too deep.

commented Dec 8, 2013 by gidgreen

commented Dec 8, 2013 by offline

commented Dec 8, 2013 by Jay

commented Dec 18, 2013 by gidgreen

commented Dec 18, 2013 by maxjtechno

commented Dec 18, 2013 by q2amarket

commented Feb 22, 2014 by monk333

I am quite late but I feel I have to comment as well on this ongoing issue.

Nothing against any programmer here, but there is no one experienced enough to handle a project like this. I think gideons first suggestion: "The best answer I can suggest is to simply fork the project, and create a community-developed spinoff under a different name." is the rigth and only one.

I am sure scott will make a great work, but developing q2a into a more actual community like script by having new media fields, blog and new content types like articles instead of questions or modern communication tools to be able to set up modern sites far beyond from a classic Q and A site is not inside his (actual) interest or possibilities but very important for many users to stay with q2a.

Tumblr for example is years old and since years q2a is close to it. Or any blog script is so close but we still can´t get there. Same for any media related discussion platform.

Same for a community script where not questions but smalltalk are the main interest, a small facebook, a groups realted community script or something in this direction is close but not possible. See ask.fm for example.

I see that there may be opinions that I am going to far, but I think this is absolutely not the case, because q2a is such a good work that it should grow into this direction and because the market is hungry for matching scripts.

I believe that q2a could be one of the very few leading scripts in the market.

This is the reason why I think that Gideon should take his baby to the 2.0 level before he steps a side a bit and different groups of developers follow the different directions.

There is nobody here who can do that if not he himself.

commented Feb 23, 2014 by gidgreen

commented Feb 23, 2014 by q2amarket

I completely agree with Gideon.

I have been working with Gideon since long time and now with Scott and found both have tremendous experience and skill which I never found in anyone here on Q2A community. They know very much goal oriented and know very well what is better for Q2A.

I also found Scott is very much active in Q2A development now and that you can see on Github.

Many people here asked about adding blog system and so on.. I really glad to know that Gideon has the same thought as mine. I always say NO to blog within Q2A since it is purely Q&A script. I would prefer to have more advanced features for Q&A rather than re-inventing the wheel by adding blog system.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is the reason why I think that Gideon should take his baby to the 2.0 level before he steps a side a bit and different groups of developers follow the different directions.

>> I am sure Gideon is still with Q2A and will always be :) but he had taken this decision just because of time constraint, and he wants Q2A to keep growing.

commented Feb 23, 2014 by monk333

Ok, as I see on Gideons comment, he does not see the sense in taking q2a into a "general framework for community generated content". I did not realize that this is the situation. I just remember the philosophy to follow in the scripts development the user input and I am sure that there have been enough posts which asked for more community / blog / media features.

And it is not about reinventing the wheel. There is no real light weight and save general community content script on the market. The advantage of q2a is that it is stable and incredebly fast, a framework, which could compete with everything else on the market easily. As I am no programmer I know very most scripts and I am sure that it would be great if q2a could grow into that direction.

As well I am sure that Scott is fully competent to maintain q2a as question and answer script. I have seen him from the beginning on and have seen how his competence grew over the years into an real expert level.

But, and this is what I truly without offending anybody think, Scott like Soni in his last comment, are only interested in a question and answer framework.

In summary I just can repeat what I wrote before: It would be great if Gideon could take q2a to a community content 2.0 level, or saying it in his words "If that´s the goal, I think it should be a hard fork". Because otherwise I believe q2a wont get there, and "just" beeing an excellent and well maintained question and answer script. It is that "hard fork" which only Gideon could do, I am sure.

I read about what the community members say, but I as well see that many "young" members did not follow because they missed modern features.

However, I am happy to have found q2a years ago and I will stay.

(Besides, I would pay much money for having a q2a community 2.0.)

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