Dear CMS Made Simple Community,

I’ve discovered CMSms in June 2005, and I instantly felt in love. CMSMS was my life for the last 6 years. To me, it was like a child - all I’ve done was purely for the “baby” which I wanted and still want to see growing.

And I have worked really hard. I’ve done different jobs - first as moderator of the German boards. I didn’t have any experience in forum support. But from my job as a web designer I know what I have to do for my clients. So I’ve regarded every request on the German forums as request of my clients and tried to help as much as I can.

I’ve done several things for and with CMSms: project manager of the German translation team, website owner of cmsmadesimple.de, website admin of cmsmadesimple.org, forum admin on cmsmadesimple.org, documentation author, contact to the German press, international support and was member of the dev team too.

One result of my work is the German speaking user base being one of the biggest CMSms groups. This say’s to me I have done something right!

But after being online for 81 days and 6 hours, having submitted over 9460 support postings and a karma of 151 – this forum goes into a time of darkness.

Some time ago, my access permission to website cmsmadesimple.org was deleted - … without any prior notification, conversation, comment or information to me. A little bit later, I was kicked out the dev team … also without any prior notification, conversation, comment or information to me.

Some days before Geek Moot I got an email from dev team:



After that, a german board (I created ) dedicated to patches was closed/hidden.

Additionally my permission as a forum admin was deleted … without any prior notification, conversation, comment or information to me.

As I said – all requesting forum members are “clients” for me. I cannot accept a prohibition on thinking, on answering or supporting my “clients”.

I think a CMS should have a section in the forum, that addresses specific problems and often very individual problems and provides solutions. In the essence, basically any CMS implementation is very special and it's just strength of CMSMS that it can be relatively simple "individualized".

And I’m also thinking, it’s transgressing against GPL. If you make a look at the history of GPL software it is a history of patches (see Linux). Patches means development.

But dev team says:


Really? If you just take a look at the bug reports, you will find there’s even an unfinished bug reports from 2007

http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/bug/list/6 ... osed=false

When professional developers see that they are surely not motivated to post more bug reports. Means the mechanism does NOT work.

If it doesn’t transgress GPL in law, it so does at least to its sense. On many places around the world there are lawsuits to force producers to release their modifications based on GPL. But on CMSms it’s an inverted world.

Some days ago I was deleted as moderator of the German boards, was deleted as project admin for German translations, was deleted as “CMSms Language Partner” and the link to http://www.cmsmadesimple.de as a German support page was deleted - and all this …  you will anticipate it … without any prior notification, conversation, comment or information to me.

Don’t know why CMSms wouldn’t want to have german users, a german support page and german translations.

Another intolerably point is the type of communication in the English part of the forum. Converning this I get mails like this:



Think - all customer are clients. Clients means money, directly or indirectly (orders, money from advertising, votes on packt awards). Why do you throw money outside the window with such bad communication?

And many people feel their opinions being suppressed. Also a critical member of the German translation team was banned … without any conversations, comments or information to me as the project manager.

And last but not least it’s about the current posting about “Commercial Advertising Rules”, which I cannot accept:

http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... 29.new#new

The footer was not only used for spam, it was used too by really engaged (professional) users to provide information about their service. In my mind this is a great chance to give these engaged users a benefit. You can’t pay the supporters, but you can give engaged users benefits so they will do support you. If you disallow this kind of motivation – these users will be much fewer.

And don’t tell me something about commercial advices - I make cmsms support for 6 years now and I know how to recognize footer spam.

OK, long story short:

I’ve discussed these events, which might look like mobbing for everyone, intensively with my german co moderators, and we’ve made a decision in common – we (means cyberman, NaN - author of AdvancedContent, FrontendUser Mailer, GBFilePicker and some other extensions; Andiministrator - author of many useful modules like MultiDomain and some other - details here, nhaack - author of the really great “swizz knife” tag content_dump) will leave the forum on cmsmadesimple.org. You can be sure this was one of the hardest decision in our life.

Farewell CMS Made Simple!

Andreas Just
a ka cyberman

Is that true?

vilkis

Despite I am convinced there are always two sides to a story, and every single one wants the best for CMSms, I think this is a real pitty

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well said, Jos.  Regardless of exactly how this came about, or what the other side to the story is, this is not a good thing for CMSMS.  The 4 leaving have been some of the most committed and helpful members - ad hoc members of the unofficial CMSMS support team.  Very unfortunate.

I'd be interested in hearing from the dev team on this, as the departing members will leave quite a hole to be filled within the community.

This is a natural effect of too strict rules being realized by dev team.

vilkis

EDIT: After the response from Ted, I feel I have to correct this post.

Wow!  :-\

I don't know the ins and outs of this story and I don't want to kick anyone in the head, but this is weird...

... weird behaviour from the cmsms/dev-team.
From behind this desk, it looks a bit like the American government, 'they' see something 'they' don't like and 'they' kill it. No discussion, no constructive talks. Just doing what 'they' want and ram it down people's throat. 'They' consider 'themselfs' to be the top of the crop and everybody else is just a peasant annoying the sh*t of 'them' and interfering with the plans 'they' make. I´m not saying it is exactly the same, but it is starting to look like it.
In retrospect this was not a fair comparisation. Where a government gets paid by the people to do what the people need, the case with CMSMS is different: here people do what other people need, for free. They invest a lot of time in the development of a product they give away to the world. Therefore, they have more to say and are in a position to behave in a certain way.

I always taught a community is a place where people come together, where there is room for different views and discussion is the way to get to the next step. Turns out, it is not. At least, not here.
What strikes me most about this whole thing is, that a very helpful person is banned overnight. If what I read in your post, Cyberman, is correct, there was no warning whatsoever and that my friends, is what I can only describe as Chinese suppression or dictatorship.
Turns out, there has been room for discussion and there was contact prior to the removal of forumrights and/or being kicked from the dev-team.

I have to agree with your remarks about the ´environment´ in the English section. Ok, sometimes certain posts ask for a certain answer, but in general people are not really friendly (ofcourse there are exceptions)

I'm very interested in the views from the team who decided to ban good people. Also I hope there is still room for a good talk between all those involved and maybe even coming back on some decisions.

Cyberman, NaN, Andiministrator, Nhaack: Thank you very much for all your constructive help to the community over all the years. Although we don't really know each other (well, you don't know me, I saw posts from you guys all over the place, so at least I recognize the names  :D). I'm very sorry to see you leave, I hope you'll find a new platform where you can do what you do best!

To end this, maybe we should introduce the slogan: "Community Made Friendly"  ::)
Maybe if we all just give each other a little more room, try to understand each other better and communicate in a more friendly way, we all end up better.

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@HansDampf: Lets play the ball in stead of a man!

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Get nice guestbook messages from your site visitors with the brand new Gbook module.
Integrate Piwik Web Analytics in your site admin with the Piwik module.
Extend your global site settings with the Custom Global Settings module.
The Fourth Dutch CMS Made Simple Workshop on April 9 2011 was great fun! Read all about it here
Announcement: The Fifth Dutch CMS Made Simple Workshop coming up?

Now I will tell you a secret ;=)

I got banned from this forum without discussions 4 times in the last years ..

My profiles:

Connie => jazzbüro => Avantart => wdberatung => HansDampf

all the time this was done without any dialogue or communication with me, one time as a reaction to a comment, where I wrote ironically: "now you can ban me again".. and the master did 

I was always sad that there was no community support for others, for me, nobody protested that Connie was banned, nobody protested after I was banned after that joke ... nothing

I tell you, that I work in a software company for more than 20 years now, I am working in the support dept. and I am used to name errors or bugs directly or to make suggestions for usability etc. directly and frankly without bowing to the ground and excusing myself for being so direct... because that is not professional and costs too much time

but here it seems that this was not understood, I was always stigmatized as "demanding too much, only demanding... " and I was told I could do everything myself (how? I am no programmer) and that I did not cooperate, just take (what is not true at all)

I tell you that I am engaged in some open source projects and I never experienced this behaviour anywhere else

I am sure I will be kicked off now again but that's no problem for me
And I promise I will not come back here

but: we must separate CMSMS from some persons. CMSMS is a phantastic tool which I love very much. Unfortunately it (or he /Calguy ??) doesn't love me

So I say FareWell as well, there are other  mothers with beautiful sons (as we say in German)
I just whish some of the members of the community would wake up

it is that man

I am very sad to read this.  But unfortunately it is only a proceeding of a policy started years ago. This fits very well to the handling showed at MLE.  It fits very well to the handling of non-professional users.

CMSMS enabled me to create my own webpage very simple, but I felt always (which exception of the german board) as an unwelcome intruder to an elitist society.

The attitude shown is the beginning of an split in the community. Forces which could achieve a lot will be diverted.

It's not only that man - there are also all the others who let him do this way and don't say or do against anything. And here I include also Ted Kulp - where is he? Isn't he the "Big Boss"?

In this way they are crashing the (for me) best CMS in a way I don't understand.

And ....


... why don't they write about their site of the story?

I agree owr_web.
I hope the "officials" will inform us about their standpoint.

I do not know anything about this story, I do not know anything about cyberman's guilt, but (even if it's true) cyberman deserves at least an explanation. After this event I think we (the Community) also have right to see clearly what happened.
I don't know cyberman, but he pulled me back to CMSMS this year, and he helped me a lot in the past. I do not think he was against CMSMS and Community.
That is a sorrowful story...

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Számításaim szerint az én problémám nem is létezik...

No he isn't  ;D - you can read more about it in an german post here: http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... #msg235423

I can't catch it, sorry... maybe in English or Hungarian 

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Számításaim szerint az én problémám nem is létezik...

As i already wrote in German board, there is not only single person to blame, not cyberman and not calguy.
99% of us here don't even know these persons in personal so who are we to judge people on some statements?
If anyone here is to blame, it is the whole community.
When there are bosses, DEV's, Moderators and Community members  that allways say yes to everything all these years, you can't expect that suddenly when you no longer want to say yes, everything will change.

Timing for decissions like this was more then bad, as Packt winner this doesn't throw nice light at CMSMS and how Problems here were (or not) solved is just childish, but this is exact mirror of our world as it is, there will allways be persons, teams, countries that want to fight.

From my point of view, whole DEV and Moderators team has got the whole situation wrong and even we, community members.
Things like this should be solved internaly and with words, not actions and especially not talking about it publicly!

Some of you are right that Ted as "Founder" should be the first to speak and make a statement, but not now, this should of been done long time ago.
Just for example, statements like "CMSMS is only for Professionals", personally i think this statement is completely wrong for an Open Source product that wants some success.
You do not get success with only "Professionals" it's simple people that search for free, open source products or do you think all these Downloads were made by Pro's?

A Pro will write his own CMS, a Pro will not bother to hang out here in Forums and do some support, it's simple people that just try to help with their experience.
Don't get me wrong, i do not say that you Support guys/moderators aren't Pro's but you should also go through all Forum posts or search Google for CMSMS sites and you will see that you will find more "Unprofessional" questions and sites around.

Edit: @Ted
Maybe in situations like this, the best possible option would be selling the whole Project, making it Commercial, since if in an Open project there is no real leader that points Directions, there will allways be situation like this. Not talking, staying in background, either you or DEV team will for sure make this topic disappear for some time, but not solving problems only brings bigger problems some time later.
With few DEV members it is impossible to run a Project like this, if you take a look at Forge or Bug Tracker you will see what i am talking about.
In Bug Tracker there are many "Open" bugs, some of these have already been resolved but they are still open.
And now instead of actively seeking for more Help, more volunteers, Community is even losing DEV and Community members and i am not only speaking about Cyberman but the whole CMSMS situation.

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