Allow comments in the blog

Norfeldt

Just wanted to congratulate Debbie Maron who is joining the Community Lead @ Zotero. But comments are not allowed.. think it's sad and it's not the first time I wanted to comment. Could it please be allowed?

ajlyon

Bruce and others have commented on this. It really ought to be allowed-- for now trackbacks are allowed, so the best you can do is write about the post in your own blog.

sean

I'm sure once Debbie makes her official start (in just a few hours), she'll be happy to thank you for the congratulations.

We turned off blog comments years ago for two reasons. First, it's not really a blog in the conventional sense. We're basically using Wordpress as a CMS to provide news updates: press releases, new features, etc. Second, and more important, the comments were overrun with technical support issues and feature requests, which were going entirely ignored since they really belong here, in the forums.

It's a little silly to characterize the lack of comments on our "blog" as somehow indicative of a closed culture since there are already multiple great ways to communicate with Zotero developers and users (the forums, the dev lists, Twitter). The advantage of all of these other avenues is that they're far more easily accessible and broadcast than siloed blog comments, which really don't help anyone.

bdarcus

It's a little silly to characterize the lack of comments on our "blog" as somehow indicative of a closed culture since there are already multiple great ways to communicate with Zotero developers and users (the forums, the dev lists, Twitter)

Since I made one of those "silly" comments, let me just point out exactly what I said. To quote myself, on twitter ...

yes, it is rather ironic that an announcement for a new #zotero community liason has closed comments!

I was replying to someone who read the blog post and wanted to offer their congratulations, but who is not a a member of this forum, and had no twitter username for Debbie.

I don't see how that observation is "silly."

Rintze

Hey Bruce, maybe we should take the plunge and switch to Mendeley (apparently they allow comments on their blog, e.g. http://www.mendeley.com/blog/start-up-life/william-gunn-joins-mendeley-as-community-liaison/ ). :)

sean

I was replying to someone who read the blog post and wanted to offer their congratulations

Bruce, you're one of my favorite real and virtual colleagues, but this statement is nearly as disingenuous as the supposed congratulations. As you are well aware, this "someone" is a paid employee of a competing closed-source for-profit project looking for any reason to cast doubt on the openness of Zotero.

but who is not a member of this forum

Member since March 2009. (There's also another account probably his from 2007).

and had no twitter username for Debbie.

This is true, but then again neither did we. As far as I know she just created her account last week.

I'm very happy that people are so excited about Debbie's start, but really, let's not get bogged down in an at least partially manufactured controversy about openness.

matt_price

Hey guys,

tangentially relevant: I'd also like to offer congratulations, but there're also some questions I'd like to ask directly of the community Lead. In particular, I'd love to hear more about hte ucrrent timeline for Zotero Everywhere. I'm waiting for some kind of beta release to appear so I can schedule a little tech talk in my department & introduce Zotero to my colleagues. I'm not sure this warrants a forum post, but there seems to be no other choice. So, well, here it is I guess...

bdarcus

Bruce, you're one of my favorite real and virtual colleagues, but this statement is nearly as disingenuous as the supposed congratulations.

"Disingenuous"? That's an awfully strong word to use in this context.

dstillman

matt_price: That's not really related to this thread at all—there's no need to direct questions at anyone in particular—but here's your answer:

Zotero Standalone Alpha 1

Please start new threads for other issues.