Talk:Joomla/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Joomla. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Letter to the community

Please, don't just copy and paste information: Put it down in your own words! - Maybe a link should be enough for that letter - Everyone can read it there! - Can't we ? --Sputnik(.de) 06:27, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

one person says, "don't paste, link;" another says "too many links." The content may soon disappear from the source. The paste should be preserved as part of this historical event.--Wrobertson 21:16, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
- Surely the content won't disappear from the web as long as people continue to think it interesting ("historical", even)? After I AFD'd the article, some of the most promotional phrases were removed , making it better, but then that long letter with the huge list of names got added, making it worse again. It just has nothing encyclopedic about it. I wouldn't say just link to the letter, myself, I'd say link and summarize and for pete's sakes leave out the names. If the community were to actually improve this article, instead of first improving and then f***ing it up again, and instead of shoouting that *I* ought to have improved it (a seriously weird idea, if you knew how unconversant I am with the subject), I might vote "Keep" myself. Bishonen | talk 22:51, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
  - I was thinking in terms of the original source of the letter on the Mambo website. But, you have a fair point that Wikipedia will not be the only historical source of the letter and haved edited to link to it on Open Source Matters. I'm *trying* to follow suggestions by you and others; please don't get abusive. Before you note that the "Open Source Matters" merge is redundant -- I'm not done with it yet. Thank you! --Wrobertson 23:17, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

External Links

Can we please keep the external links to relavant/important sites only. I feel the following two links should not be in the article, and I've removed them. Please discuss the matter here before you place any of these links back in the article.

The first one is just advertising/spam, so definitely keep that out; somebody debate the Lone Mamber with me if you want. Shoffman11 18:11, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

The warraguldirectory.com.au is certainly inappropriate. The Lone Mamber blog is a significant part of the ongoing debate surrounding this event and an appropriate link - perhaps the most important link to the controversy part of this article. This is labelled a current event before I got to it and that has not been debated. Current events are worthy of links to news articles about the event, are they not? Please continue the debate before deleting resources that others might find helpful. --Wrobertson 21:34, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

I re-added a few of the external links that were there back in Nov. All but one of the them are from internet "news" sources and are relavent I think. As for the last, The Lone Mamber is more commentary on the situation itself that lead to the creation of Joomla... relavent in and of itself. Dixen 18:43, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Any reason why you are not allowing links to our other Official Sites? See ref: http://dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/PHP/Scripts/Content_Management/Joomla/Official_Joomla_Sites/
- I feel we don't need the extra links because all of the other Offical Sites can be accessed by links on the top of the Joomla.org site. Really, all of the Official sites are classifed as one site, thus the need for only one link in the article. Note: I didn't remove the links, just adding my $0.02. Shoffman11 02:52, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
- I'm the one that typically removes excessive and inappropriate links as I keep the page on my watchlist. Currently there is a link to both joomla.org and opensourcematters.org. Joomla.org has links to each of the 7 sites listed in the Open Directory on the top of their page... re-adding these links to the external links section of the page just clutters the article up and takes away from the professional appearance of the article. Typically someone who is going to visit Wikipedia to find out more about Joomla is then going to go to the main site (joomla.org) and then be presented with all the necessary information he or she needs to make any necessary decision from there... Too many links is more than likely to overwhelm a new user as opposed to making the user feel invited to check out a site for more information. Dixen 22:53, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
- There are many, many links that "could" be made regarding Joomla as it is a very large community with a huge international backing. Can we agree that the existing links are sufficient? I'm even ready to reverse my own previous opinion and remove such things as the link to the lone mamber as this is no longer a current event. Thoughts? User:Wrobertson 02:56, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Joomla Awards?

I've been seeing sites that claim that Joomla! won two awards:

The Joomla! project won "Best Linux / Open Source Project" for 2005.
The second award which Joomla! figures in was won by core member Brian Teeman. Brian won "UK Individual Contribution to Open / Source" for 2005.

Sources:

Is there really that much difference between Open Source Project and Open Source Solution or are they really two different awards? There were even claims that Peter Lamont issued a statement addressing this win by Joomla (http://forum.mamboserver.com/showthread.php?p=291811#post291811). How exactly does this breakdown? Quadra23 05:38, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Per the Linux Awards Website: "Best Linux/Open Source Project Winner - Joomla! - Open Source Matters" and "UK Individual Contribution to Linux/Open Source Winner - Brian Teeman".

Source:

http://www.linuxawards.co.uk/content/view/26/42/

As to the difference between "Project" and "Solution", IMO there is a huge difference. Firefox is a project... you use it "as is" and there are small addons avail for it in the form of Themes or extensions. Joomla is a solution... you can use it straight out of the box or customised the absolute hell out of it, mold it and shape it as you need for your individual purpose; be it for use on the internet, and intranet, or running off your home computer for some other purpose.

As to the claim made by Peter Lamont, I don't think it's going to go anywhere... *only* the individual who made the entry can edit it... bottom line here is that 80% of the community and developers have adandoned Mambo for the Joomla Project. I do believe it's moot for him to even try at this poinit in time.

Dixen 20:45, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Claims against Mambo

The article says:

The development team claimed that many of the provisions of the foundation structure went against previous agreements made by the elected Mambo Steering Committee, lacked the necessary consultation with key stake holders, and included provisions that violated core Open Source values. However none of these claims have ever been substantiated.

It seems a bit NPOV to dismiss the claims without mentioning them in more detail. It conveys the impression that these claims were false, without providing a way for the reader to judge the truth of the situation. Additionally, it seems that the "lacked the necessary consultation with key stake holders" claim would pretty much have to be true, if the developers in question weren't consulted.

The entire point of the article is to remain NPOV as much as possible. If you can come up with a way to rewrite that section without predujice or bias towards Mambo while mentioning the claims in further detail then by all means I'd be interested in seeing it added. However, you can't "blast Mambo" for something that unfortunately lacks verifiable proof. If some sort of proof existed to substaniate the claims of the core team then I am all for blasting the hell out of Mambo, the foundation and everyone still associated with that camp. As fate would have it at this point in time all we really have to go on is the word of the Core Dev Team... and while that may be more than enough for me (and many others obviously) it's not good enough to add any POV to the article. Dixen 18:17, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
The paragraph seems fairly NPOV to me (although, I wrote much of it and so I'm probably biased). I think the "claimed" is a good NPOV word. Might the last line be more acceptable if it read, "However, none of these claims have been substantiated, yet." To the OP: the part in question is not whether the core devs were consulted but whether that was necessary. Lamont's rebuttal is it was unnecessary, not that it happened. WALTR 00:12, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

The entire Miro/Lamont issue is now moot considering neither Miro (which no longer exists), Peter Lamont, nor Mambo Communities has any stake in the Mambo Project. The project is now totally controlled by the Mambo Foundation which no longer has any commercial interests in the project. Unlike Joomla which has multiple commercial interests consisting mostly of Joomla Team Member commercial sites. It's quite interesting that one of OMs original intent was to rid itself of commercial interests. Now it has become the exact same thing it was trying to avoid during the split.

It should also be noted that several key core members of the Joomla project have either stepped down or left the project because of bitter in-fighting. One could surmise that a leopard never changes its spots. It seems the Joomla project is not the big happy family on the inside that it claims publicly.

Joomla! features

The article says:

"Joomla! includes features such as page caching to improve performance, web indexing, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, forums, polls, calendars, website searching, and language internationalization."

Joomla! features include page caching, RSS feeds, printable version of pages, news flashes, polls and website searching, but web indexing, blogs, forums, calendars and language internationalization are available only as Third Party Developer extensions, under different licenses. Joomla! does not include those features. It´s false.

Ibnhafsun 00:08, 8 October 2006 (UTC) yes it does. ur false. 72.36.251.234 21:37, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Why is everyone so harsh? Forums and (depending on what you mean by it) calendars are 3rd party, but ones are available that are under the same license. It does internationalization, web index, and blogging natively in the current version (1.0.11) (cf: http://help.joomla.org/content/section/16/153/). WALTR

Joomla isn't as easy for a beginner as it alleges to be. Heard wikipedia discussed on NPR today . Feel free to delete this if this is the wrong place to whine about Joomla. what are tildes?

Article Tags

I think it's ridiculous that this article is tagged as not adequately citing its references or sources, while in the same breath requesting "Please, don't just copy and paste information." So which is it? Did the original author cite references or not..and if so, what is lacking/needing enhancement/modification? That tag should be removed entirely and simple annotations made where clarity is needed. Frankly, I feel that the citation is fine and references are obvious. I'm as close to an anencephalic monkey as a humanoid biped comes...and I clearly understood the references and sources...I suppose that's enough said on that subject.

As for the Spam tag...erm...the product is FREE people...FREE...are we going to tag articles about AIR as Spam now? How about Water??? Water comes in bottled form now...can be sold for profit? Yes...that's taking things a bit far, but I think the whole Spam hysteria needs a moment of reflection. An article about a free, open source offering that I personally consider to be a remarkable development is not only notable, it's historical. Or perhaps we should delete the article on SUSE too...I noticed that has received NO notice whatsoever and is all but a mirror reflection of this article. So if you're going to delete this article, I'm nominating SUSE right after it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by LactoseIntolerant (talk • contribs).

I have removed the tags. The article seems OK now; I guess when I initially added the tags, I was offended by the article stating "award-winning" (which was subsequently cited). Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

Note that you are welcome to remove maintenance tags yourself with a reasonable explanation in the edit summary.

However, I disagree with your comments about these tags, you are clearly misled about their purpose. Also, you might want to adopt a more constructive tone. Remember that Wikipedia editors are normal people, and hence not infallible; however, problems and mistakes can be solved, unlike traditional sources of information.

"while in the same breath requesting "Please, don't just copy and paste information.""

There is a clear difference between pointing out where the author took his information (citing), and copying that information, although quotes and such are covered by fair use. Wikipedia is often criticized for its reliability, and rightly so. Verifiability is a core idea of Wikipedia, and the only real way to make such an open encyclopedia reliable. Ideally, a person entirely unfamiliar with the subject should be able to verify all facts and points of view presented in an article. Another obvious advantage is that other editors can correct what initial editor had misunderstood or misrepresented, and remove original research without damaging sourced information. For details on this topic, please see the attribution policy.

"As for the Spam tag...erm...the product is FREE people"

The "advert" tag speaks about the article's content, not its subject. "Written like an advert" means that the article tries to push non-neutral facts, without attributing them to a source, which means that a reader cannot tell what kind of bias the statement might have. This is what advertisements do, and it is a violation of the Wikipedia neutral point of view policy; for more details you can read describing points of view. And indeed, even texts about air and water could be made to sound like an advert in this manner, needless to say bottled water brands.

"So if you're going to delete this article, I'm nominating SUSE right after it."

Nothing was said about the notability of the topic, or deletion of the article. "Advert", "unsourced", etc are called maintenance or clean-up tags; their goal is to attract editors' attention to problems that editors have identified, but were too busy or lacked the knowledge to fix.

-- intgr 22:24, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Swahili or Arabic

I'm reading the first chapters of "Arabic for dummies". And in the chapter about grammar, the author uses the word "joomla" as transcription for the Arabic word for "sentence". And so I'm wondering whether we're quite sure that joomla is derived from Swahili and not from Arabic. Could anyone take a look at this and let us know ? Gertcuppens 08:57, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Read this. [1] 218.208.227.77 17:40, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Joomla is definitely an Arabic word which is still commonly used in different countries in the Arab world to indicate "wholesale". I'm not sure if the word was adopted in Swahili from Arabic. However, I believe the origin of the word is not an issue here since the article is about an item that was made and named consciously, as opposed to evolved by common use.Jak123 15:46, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Joomla is Arabic for "sentence" as the first person mentioned, I have never heard of it being referred to as meaning "wholesale". Swahili itself is a mixture between Arabic and the Bantu languages present in Africa. The name Swahili is derived from the Arabic sawahil which means coastline.

Persian/Farsi is my mother language. Although I am not a scholar in Persian language, I can say the following which may further extend our understanding of the "Joomla" name. Using strict phonetic spelling (vocally stress the capital), "jom-Leh" means sentence, "saw-Hel" means beach. The English word 'coastline' translates to "khat-Teh sawhelli" which literally means 'line of the beach' or 'beach line'. The Persian word "jaam" may mean 'all together' or 'mathematic addition' or 'collection' or 'gathering' or 'as a whole'. For same reason, I can see how 'wholesale' may have crept in the bunch. However, I know of no such word as "jaam-Leh", but I can see how this could mean 'all together' or 'as a whole'.

The Arabic for sentence (or between) is الجمله. Rough transliteration is GMLh, pronounced more like Jemla IMHO - at least in the Hijaz. It's a different word with a different pronunciation. (All) together would be جميعا = GMYHA. Maybe the Swahilli word is from the same root, but Joomla's not from Arabic. Anjouli (talk) 15:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Jumla جُمْلَة in Arabic means sentence, but it also means "as a whole / in it's totality" (as in جملة وتفصيلا) and "wholesale" (as in سوق الجملة وسوق المفرد). When in doubt, check an Arabic dictionary. Actually, the origin or the word is "as a whole / in it's totality / in the group / in the aggrigate"; both "wholesale" and "sentence" were derived from that first meaning. In any case, don't you think that this discussion belongs in Wikamoos not here? --Maha Odeh (talk) 07:33, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Although this may be true, the Aramaic meaning had nothing to do with the selection of the name. The article is about the software Joomla!, not the entomology of the name outside of why it was selected initially. Nathandiehl (talk) 20:11, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

The official page says it's Swahili. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.92.195.194 (talk) 21:19, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion on grammar

The name is an English spelling of the Swahili word [..] / The name is an anglicisation of the Swahili word [..]

Reads better to me, any takers? --Streaky 01:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

The 20 Questions with Miro article. Where is it?

In footnote 5, there is a an article about the The Mambo Open Source Controversy - 20 Questions With Miro. I cannot find that article for the life of me. I see all sorts of references, but no article. It does not seem to be on Ric Shreves' site anymore. Any ideas? 18:33, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Change in stance to proprietary extensions

I wonder if Joomla!'s stace to proprietary extensions should be noted in the article or not. It has caused a bit of a stir. However, I do not know if any sites could really be found that would fit the citation critera. http://www.joomla.org/content/view/3510/1/ Mikemill 18:50, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

just wait for them to come along. there are already articles coming out in reputable tech journals and sites. this is significant news because it is 1) joomla self-destructing and a gift to mambo, 2) significant in the cultural and legal history of open source and GPL. Particularly re. how new hybrid free/open source/commercial markets and lashback against them by people with purely ideological hangups that are utterly wrongheaded. I'm sure this can be said with a NPOV. 70.94.33.121 04:51, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Features (again)

Neither Joomla web site nor this feature section cover the features of Joomla. And if you read the text twice or three times you will say "this says NOTHING". Can someone find out the features and list them here, please? I'm especially wondering if it supports multi-language web sites or not.

THANKS -- Michael Janich 10:37, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

"Joomla!" vs. "Joomla"

I think exclamation points ("!") in the middle of sentences, and at the end of sentences where they look silly and the statement is not meant to be shouted, look silly. I originally removed most instances of "Joomla!" in this page and replaced them with "Joomla", but it appears another user has reverted this (after some time). See similar discussion here. --Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 06:10, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

No disagreement? I will make the changes. --Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 20:00, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The exclamation mark is considered part of the name.--WALTR (talk) 16:43, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

The exclamation mark is not part of the legally trademarked name. From a copyright perspective, if there is a brand discrepancy such as what has happened with Joomla vs Joomla!, the initial trademark, which did not have an exclamation mark, takes legal precedent as that is what has established the brand. El Mariachi (talk) 03:17, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's our place to determine what looks 'silly'. This article should be information-driven, not opinion-driven. This project is named 'Joomla!', not 'Joomla', and as such, I am against using an improper name in the body of this article. The editorial guide of Joomla! (http://help.joomla.org/workshop/documents/Editorial%20Style%20Guide%20v1.0.5.pdf) on page 30 states "Always capitalise and include the exclamation mark every time except in code." As such, I cannot recommend using the improper "Joomla" name. As for copyright, Joomla! is owned by Open Source Matters, which owns the copyright. I have no idea what you're talking about 'initial trademark', as it has always been an Open Source Matters project...Nathandiehl (talk) 18:30, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it is our place in a way; the community determines how the encyclopedia is formatted. For example, the manual of style has guidelines that the community has decided on for just such cases here. The proper and most common name is used as the article name and at the lead, but elsewhere, the ! should be dropped. Shell ^babelfish 22:23, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The initial trademark, filed in Australia, on 2nd of September 2005, the launch date of the name to the wider open source community, does not include an exclamation mark. It is this trademark that establishes the legitimacy of the brand. So if the Joomla editorial guide says one thing and the legal trademark says another, obviously the editorial guide is wrong. El Mariachi (talk) 01:37, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, really odd. Thanks for the link to trademarks. I think it's odd, but community rules! Nathandiehl (talk) 14:11, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

You may think it's odd but it's what enshrined in the legal trademark of Joomla. And since the MoS for Wiki has certain rules for referencing trademarks, I suggest you take up the brand discrepancy with the Core Team of Joomla since they wrote their visual and editorial guides. The Wiki MoS is kept to by referencing it as "Joomla", and it conforms to the legal trademark requirements. El Mariachi (talk) 02:24, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, it appears that the copyright holder, Open Source Matters, Inc., agrees that stylistically the exclamation mark should not be included in such cases (cf http://opensourcematters.org/). WALTR (talk) 01:47, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Citation please, Wendy. Otherwise, it is just speculation that cannot be added to the Joomla wiki entry El Mariachi (talk) 08:10, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

The exclamation mark is not part of the name, it is only part of their logo or image or communication strategy. If they always underlined their name, we would not be obliged to oblige them on that. IMO, the article title could be with or without the exclamation mark, but use of the name in the article should be without the exclamation mark. --Gronky (talk) 11:39, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Lots of time and tenuous argument spent on such a minor point. Regardless, the great wiki has spoken: "...choose the style that most closely resembles standard English, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner. This practice helps ensure consistency in language and avoids drawing undue attention to some subjects rather than others." This might offend you as it does me. One might question whether trademark considerations apply (as put forth in this talk) in the tightly defined context of a single encyclopedic page discussing a specific product. And even if they do, one might ponder jurisdiction. I'm not in Australia, this page might not be hosted in Australia, and trademark law varies by country. But the community's intent is clear, and we agreed to play by the rules. I firmly believe that Joomla! is the product's name, and that is how I will refer to it - but not here. spoxox 15:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spoxox (talk • contribs)

The AP Stylebook, used by nearly every media outlet calls "Yahoo!", "Yahoo", and to be consistant with everyone else I think we should follow this practice. --Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 22:29, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Henry, and if I were still an administrator I would rename the article right away. Every mention of the topic drops the exclamation - it will be easier to find and link to at "Joomla". I'm certainly not planning to type an exclamation point every time I mention Joomla in the text of the article.

It's as silly as trying to put a backwards R into the article about Korn.

On second thought, I guess it's not for me to say what is silly or wise, especially on a neutral web site like this. Maybe it's like Sun's strategy of marketing one of their Java releases as "Java 2.0". Their own engineers referred to it as Java 1.2 and if you asked the Java system what release it was, it would say Java 1.2 and as time went on the issue faded into obscurity.

I don't care one way or another, as long as we maintain the redirect. --Uncle Ed (talk) 17:08, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Ongoing page vandalism

I recommend that the Joomla page be protected against anonymous IP edits as this has resulted in ongoing page vandalism. Removing background information on factual attributable history ends up portraying the Joomla page as a soapbox or advertising material. El Mariachi (talk) 02:49, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I concur with this recommendation. It seems to be routine to undue anonymous edits. Nathandiehl (talk) 20:05, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

RPP has been submitted into queue. El Mariachi (talk) 03:36, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Twice in recent days the article has been totally blanked and once it was replaced with a couple of lines of text. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.121.70.15 (talk) 11:17, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:OpenSourceMatters.png

Image:OpenSourceMatters.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 17:58, 2 January 2008 (UTC)