BuddyPress.org

Greetings,

Alot of people tend to say things that are not working, I will try to focus on what are the things that could help BP bloom like a flower in the spring.

Here is my wish list:
First I would like to say that BP is awesome, so I wish these things could one day come to live and make BP shine!

Communication
Communication to the community is a key element in any social network to survive. Failure to do so, could lead to a devastated blast for the community. Always give clear indication on what is going on, no matter what is going on and how long time it takes. Communicate, communicate and communicate. Learn from Blizzard Entertainment etc, that just hit Starcraft 2 after 12 years.

Take the lead
The core BP guys should show us the direction, it does not mean they should work there ass off, show us where you want it to go and people will follow you. I read one of the core BP guys saying action, action & action. You are the core guys and you should take action to show us where we are heading, you cant expect people to take action who are not in control and not knowing where we are going. That’s absurd. Show us where and what to dig. Plain and simple and trust me – it will never work the way around. Period.

Usability
Group & Forums the whole thing is a mess, you know why? the whole thing lack of usability, to many buttons, just not user-friendly. Do the usability right, make it clean and simple. It’s all what matter. Just of the lack of usability, many people would not use BP social sites because the forums sucks, and it’s here people want to express them to the community and if they can’t the whole thing fail.

Catch todays web trends
This is absolutely the highest priority to follow the web trends such as facebook intergration, twitter open id, web 2.0 – you name it. For a social network for survive – because it’s opens the door to socialize for everyone. Let people be able to comment, login with any open tool around the web. Intergrade them, they will pay off well.

Visual expression
Today’s web is much based on simplicity and visual expression, and this is done via photos and videos. BP is lacking such features, this should be top priority to have a photo album included.

Core Plugins
This one is a bit tricky, but pay off well. It’s the classic situation a plugin developer create a plugin, don’t update and stops the support. With core plugins you could setup rules of quality for such plugins so they meet standard and at least are working properly. This will increase both user satisfaction and the quality of the product. Let it be open source, and let people be able to contribute the development of these such a tracker on BP and WP.

Developers & Plugins Motivation
So you guys want us make plugins that fine, but whats the catch? why should I make a plugin?, you know in todays world not many is willing to work for free at least not so long. So thats could be the reason why developers stops to update there plugins. Simple lack of motivation and trade-off. There is dozen of methods out there to motivate people, some for money, some in other ways. There is no right way, both lead to success. Make it win / win.

Backward compatible
This is just a killer, if you update and slash off features that will not work, it will both kill the community and the current plugin development. This one should be done very carefully.

Support, Feedback & Critism
Okay you guys need support? Tell us what to support you with, is it design layout, programming on a specific feature? Just tell. Simple huh? Learn to listen to feedback, be kind and not dominating. If you guys get critism swallow it, learn from it and be sly. This one is twofolded. Let me tell you a story in 90’s the calsberg group got 10 of thousands of feedback and you know what they did? they throwed them all the carbage can, and now when they really need the idea, they was all gone. So appreciate feedback, good or bad – it’s for better – god sake. Let people express & soon you see a fortune.

Well that’s my story of today, feedback and critism is appreciated.

Have a great day!
Brokenforum