Textpattern runs this site. These days, I’m working on another site, and like this one, the premise is that it will be managed by software, not just a collection of pages. Content Management Systems are numerous, and the last few years has seen an explosion of competent systems that can be used, often for free.
CMS’s are designed, and like any designed thing, they represent compromises. The compromises often reflect initial conceptions, or problems that someone set out to solve. These concepts or solutions seem to live an unexamined life – unexamined, that is, by the developers who build those assumptions into the deepest fibre of the project. Assumptions might be about the skills of people that will use the software, or in the case of a CMS, what a website is supposed to look like. Or, the assumption might be that no one quality should dominate, sometimes leading to a system that can only be explained by explaining this other thing. This in turn reveals the need to deal with these underlying problems, and so on. Those unfamiliar with the problem (ie almost everyone but the developers) turn off and go away.
At one time, my impulse would have been to create my own content management system. In fact, I did, once, and it still runs a site I’m proud of. But the web changes, and today the only rational way to approach most problems is to look for the thing that someone else has done, and will give you for free. Astonishingly, you usually find it. That has been my approach with the new project, but the old impulse to choose something that requires that I form and shape what I find at a fairly fundamental level, the same impulse that in the old days would have had me write my own still exists.
In that vein, I’m now looking at a fairly new, and very interesting tool for creating websites. It’s called MODx, and what I’ve seen so far is impressive.
But why look elsewhere? The client bought into revamping their existing site on the strength of what I showed them Textpattern could do. Why look for something else?
The answer has less to do with technology or design approach, the things I began with, which on the surface seem to be the driving force that determines the suitability of the one or the other software. Instead, it starts with an online discussion that has been taking place over several weeks on the Textpattern forums.
Every piece of Open Source software has to have a forum if it’s going to have any credibility, and of course Textpattern is no exception. In fact, they have a bunch of fora, wikis, a magazine, special weblogs for the developers of Texpattern, and so on and on. For someone beginning with Textpattern, its a disorienting melange of information, some up to date, some not; questions, both frequently and infrequently asked; tutorials, sometimes even on topics that you might need to know about to start using Textpattern; opinion, bien sur, everyone has an opinion, and in almost every part of the Textpattern online world, opinion is offered, admired, scoffed at, slapped down and elevated to Universal Truth through processes Too Complex To Explain, usually involving the unique psycho-social processes that the internets have given birth to. In short, Textpattern is an exemplar of the confusion of information that crashes like Hokusai’s Wave around the brave internaut who voyages on its troubled seas.
About a month ago [Feb 22, 2006, to be exact], this post troubled the waters of the Sea of Textpattern a little more. In it, one txpERT started a new topic with a fairly long, fairly well worded post. In it, he suggested that the development of Textpattern was off track. He pointed to a variety of things: the lack of a published plan, the uncertain process whereby contributions made by ‘the community’ were accepted as part of the body of code that makes up Textpattern, the lack of administration.
What followed was, over 243 postings and more than four weeks as of this writing, a textbook case of Online Communications. txpERT’s diplomatically worded, but clear posting, which expressed dissatisfaction with the issues mentioned above, received an initial response from Jeremie, a moderator of the forum, in which he cautiously but firmly, and with the same diplomacy as the starting post, denies that there is a problem. His post comes a little over an hour after txpERT’s, and is the firs t of about twenty posts in 7 hours. It’s like someone dropped a small pebble in a wasp’s nest. It ends with theEric posts
Hmm. This particular subject has come up many times in regards to Textpattern.
I don’t think it’s something that is ever going to change… At least, not under the Textpattern name.
In retrospect, you can look back at these first twenty or so posts, and see everything that would come. Most of the main participants had already jumped in. The pattern of assertion and repudiation, in the guise of acknowledgement, but in some ways simply deflection of the original post had happened.
Not a religious person, I still am struck by the old testament qualities so many of these online disputes have. theEric’s post, quoted above, has the quality of portent about it, something of Noah in theEric’s words as he suggests the impossibility of change, only cataclysm, in that delicious “at least, not under the Textpattern name”.
In post 21, michaelkpate, another forum moderator (its 4 in the morningi the next day, and i guess the original moderator went away) suggests a fork in the code. For anyone who doesn’t develop software, this might need explaining.
A fork is where a mass of code, usually that adds up to one piece of software, is divided, and different groups form to develop either one or the other. The implication is, of course, that they will grow apart, and in fact, once a fork takes place in code, you often really do have a case of one thing not being able to work with, or communicate with the other.
Going back to where I started, it’s the place, often, where the unexamined premises that were built in to the original impulse to create software have created intolerable contradictions, at least for one group. The division will often, of course, be that of the orthodox and the apostates, and ‘fork’ which could just as easily be ‘regrouping’, ‘diversifying’ or any other more neutral term, has the lovely quality of describing this Babel-like schism, and the tongue of the serpent whose blandishments, if the godly be believed, ended up with humanity turfed out of the garden.
Somehow, there is – for me, at any rate – the image of two groups, some with blood in their eyes, some weeping, watching the other as they move away in a barren desert. At first they are still able to hurl insults at each other that can be understood by the other group; later, when they yell out, the other only hears them as they hear the other, indistinctly, but the tone of derision intact. Even when they are long out of earshot, they can still look back, like Lot’s wife, and see the camels of the other, moving away. And finally, the other is no longer there, no longer mentioned, and they look around to see that it is only them left, together, and the problems of getting along in this now reduced group begin to clarify in the mists around them. Sunni and Shia.
When davidm weighs in, at post 11, his second, its with a long post, full of quotes – surely another wonderfully biblical habit – that refer back to other posts. In fact, davidm’s post is about as long as the one that kicked it all off. The tone is reasonable. but insistent. davidm’s sig says “Retired, but still an eye on txp”. Not so much biblical, this seems to me more like the delphic oracle: withdrawn from the world, but still involved in it: given the gift of sight by virtue of not being seen.
davidm seems to also fill the role of the second man in. Like Brigham Young to David Smith, Paul to Jesus, David to Solomon, it’s sometimes necessary for someone to set the thing going, but for someone else to see how to really get some mileage out of it. In fact, the instigator of the thread, txpERT, makes his initial posting, and never posts again. It’s uncanny: by doing so, the whole thread takes on this exigetical form, wherein the original statement, so brief compared to what will come after starts off being interpreted, clarified, modified, and through that process eventually becomes about the thread, and not the points that were originally raised.
In any case, at post 24, hcgtv, yet another moderator, which as they proliferate in the discussion make it seem as though moderator was like a Mormon Elder or something, chimes in with:
Michael, you fork the code by just announcing the new project, then hope for volunteers.
Those last four words really say it all. In any case, in post 29, davidm is engaging in examples of ‘forks’ that have worked out nicely. Lead us not into temptation! This is immediately followed – just 21 minutes later – by the previously unheard-of steventer:
To my eyes, the inevitable conclusion of this thread will be the announcement of a fork. Do it already. Let the users decide where they want to go with the code. I’m sure there’ll be enough volunteers among the plugin developers.
Oh, the fatality of it all, the fated quality. It’s beautiful: now what is most to be dreaded is what they are pushing for. You have spoken the Word! You know the consequences! It’s like reading the script of an old Star Trek, no doubt a formative influence for more than one of these patriarchs, where Kirk has stumbled across some Council of Disembodied Brains or Subterranean Survivors. “Very well! You have transgressed against Hnothgor! You shall go out to the Hopeless Zone!”.
And a little thrill goes through the crowd.
Terrible to say, this little interpretation of mine takes us only to the beginning of the start of the second of ten screens of posts. I can report that the debate has settled down, but not before davidm, who never received any word from txpERT, but was left, doubting but still strong in his faith to fight the good fight against an ever increasing and ever shriller group of Devs [developers – how Star Trek is that?] and moderators [which begins to sound a bit Orwellian], culminating in this:
Goodbye guys ! It’s been a great adventure :D
And so he left. I go to a better place, no doubt.
Since his departure, which was followed by several anguished cries of “don’t go!” and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and anointing their heads with ashes by some, things have settled down.
Zem now holds forth on what are basically fine points of doctrine for the faithful. Zem, who has the unfortunate avatar image of a turbaned magician or possibly demon, took a subtle role in the whole thing, a role all the more fascinating for beginning only at post 79. Zem’s strategy is positively mephistophelean, always appealing to reason, but somehow, usually by declaring his incapacity to see what the problem really is, inflaming the discussion, ensuring that sides remain separated, and being sure never to enagage in frequent or extended posts. Zem is a Dev, and as such carries the weight and authority of the Zohar, of the Adept, of the Holder of the Secrets of the Temple. Here he is, post 148:
Please, don’t insult those who have spent time and effort building resources for Textpattern, by pretending that they don’t exist; or, worse, that the thing that is lacking is a steering committee. Spend your time and energy adding to and improving those things, not discussing the selection process for the committee to appoint members of the team to design the process to request a form for approval to submit a request to fix an error on the Wiki.
The tone is rational, the inevitable result strife and irritation, or worse. There is something of Samuel about Zem. It really is this that seems to set davidm on his inevitable path to self-banishment. When an upstart suggests that no-one was being denigrated, we were just talking, Zem is back:
Regardless of intentions, I can tell you that there are valuable Textpattern contributors who are frustrated and insulted at seeing their efforts being ignored or discarded.
This is post 150. By coming back immediately, Zem shows that his laconic utterances and long periods between utterances in no way suggest he cannot be swift in battle. And it is only ten post or so later that davidm takes his leave.
Sensing the absence of a champion, theEric takes up the sword:
.. as there are users, frustrated with the information elitism prevalent with Textpattern.
Me: Elements? What was that?
Developer: You’ll get it when you get it – I’m working on it when I feel like it. I don’t get PAID to do this you know. Be grateful for what you have and sit down and shut up.
Obviously this isn’t something that is exactly said, but is indeed the feeling I get from reading certain posts.
I’ve almost made my decision. I’ve been contemplating the switch to Expression Engine, and the decision is becoming clearer.
One feels, however, that theEric is out of his depth with that nod to existential doubt, “I’ve almost made my decision”. Come on man, the time for niceties is over! Gird your loins! Credit to him in the platonic dialog part: the “Developer” is you-know-who. Maybe instead of “me” he should have put “Socrates”.
In any case, he gets his come-uppance shortly:
Utter Nonsense. Elements was explained in the detail on the weblog:
http://textpattern.com/weblog/144/textpattern-elements
That’s the point. We’re comunicating, that which we can communicate. There is neither any elitism nor any “masterplan-secrecy” involved. If we’re not communicating on something, then most likely, because we can’t (yet).
The Rumsfeld-like “We’re communicating that which we can communicate…If we’re not communicating on something, then most likely, [its] because we can’t” is fine.
Dignity in tatters, theEric tries sarcasm:
Forgive me. I didn’t realize four months between updates was acceptable.
But it is too late. It isn’t, of course Zem, who is a Dev who delivers the coup de grace, but his minions.
Zem resurfaces dozens of posts later, all opponents swept from the field by God’s Mighty Wind, and delivers the tablets given him. It’s post 188 if you care, and have the heart.
Textpattern was begotten by Dean Allen, who previously had begotten Textile, and previously begat Textism, and at the beginning of time, was Cardigan Industries. Textism was an often amusing, sometimes irritating weblog at the beginning of the Modern Weblog Era (MWE). One of my earliest inclinations that Weblogs might matter came reading Textism.
When Dean Allen started Textism, he was a typographic designer living in my old home, Vancouver, BC. Some time after starting Textism, he met and fell for a woman in France: you can read all about it in the Textism archives. So came into my mind the class of person about whom you know more than you ought. Not things of a terribly revealing nature, usually, although the fact that someone would expose even the incidentals to such an anonymous and unvetted audience is, in its way the most revealing and dreadful thing of all. Not that this is unique to Dean Allen. Far from it.
My first inkling of the birth of Textpattern was Dean’s gradual, yet rapid reduction in posting frequency on Textism. The truth be told, the site had collapsed into a bit of a mess, of envy-producing pictures of the French countryside, where Dean moved to be with his lady love. No real notification accompanied this: it was up to the readers, who returned to the site to see the same forlorn posts: ‘posted ten days ago’/’posted thirty days ago’/’posted one hundred and fifty eight days ago’. And why should he announce anything?
The irony that he had withdrawn from posting on Textism, reducing that site to the kind of languishing stagnation that sites without CMSs are stated to be, in order to develop the system that would allow updates is neither interesting, funny or original, so i won’t mention it. But the day did come when the early versions of Textpattern emerged into the light of day. A good deal of time, on the accelerated clock of webtime, has passed, and Textpattern has developed far enough to have moved from optimism to satisfaction to apostasy that the thread described above portrays.
The truly biblical thing about the thread is Dean. You have to have the almost all the pieces in the puzzle before the missing piece at the center of the puzzle can be discerned.
Here is the second paragraph of txpERT’s post:
So we seized an opportunity to reach Dean 3 weeks ago with our message during the txp meeting in Utrecht : Alex had the chance to raise those concerns. Dean confirmed he would return to TXP, eventually. But honestly, while we don’t of course doubt Dean’s willingness, lets face it: he has been busy with TextDrive and will be even more busy now with the Joyent – Textdrive cooperation. Can we expect him really coming back?
Beckett could not have bettered this. Waiting for Godean. Dean, the missing man. The flock without a shepherd. Dean, talked about, but never seen. In the posts that follow, everyone talks about Dean. As the Christians say, everyone has their own personal Dean in their hearts.
But Dean never posts. Dean is now busy with his latest thing, TextDrive, a hosting company. With the same mercurial and Zeus like presence he showed in the early days of Textpattern, he busies himself with the latest and does not allow himself to be distracted by the cries of suffering mortals. Where has he gone? As is common in the forums of the internets, when not consumed with flame-throwing rancor, the forums at TextDrive are full of happy talk and cautious inquiries:”Please, if it’s not too much trouble, Oz, could we ask to know when the server will be running at above 95% uptime?”, cut down by the familiar “SILENCE!” and of course, ignore the man behind the curtain.
So I think that I will look into MODx. Even though in one part of me, I know that trouble will find you whereever you go, that in our fallen state, the purpose of software is not to provide salvation but hope.
