Members developing code for the new platform with us

roxy_r

Hello folks,

As you know, one of the opportunities that the new platform offers us is the ability to work closer with members in actually developing the code needed for some of the improvements we want. Well, the time has come to take things to the next level and see what we are able to achieve by working together in making things better for our community.

With that in mind, I thought this would be the perfect time to have a conversation with you all and see if there are any members interested in being part of this new little project (we need a good name for this).

The platform runs on PHP (7+) for the back-end and on Javascript/Mithril for the front-end. If you have no experience with Mithril specifically, there is no need to worry, Alex told me that if you are familiar with React this will be very easy to pick up.

The initial plan for this is to:

find out whether there are any members in addition to @mrjeeves and @benjamin567 that'd like to volunteer to be a part of this, feel free to drop me a PM if you want to have a chat before volunteering.
figure out how we'd like to organize ourselves to communicate with each other, would we need a tag, a group PM or anything else?
spend a bit of time getting ourselves familiar with the platform's code, maybe pair up with Ian on a few things so we can get the hang of things
decide on what we want to start working on and ways of working so we get the best outcome for everyone.

Just to make sure we set the right expectations, we will need to give the platform team a bit of time to organize the feedback they've already received from you all as well as fix a few nagging bugs. In the meantime, we get a chance to have this conversation and come up with a plan of action to ensure we are ready for when they are .

I am very excited to be able to try this out with you and if you have any thoughts, ideas or want to join let me know.

All the best,
Roxy

[Update:]
We will add the interested members here to make sure we capture everyone.

So far, we have and yes from @pault1974 and a potential yes from @munglespoon. Thanks folks!

kathleen414

roxy_r what a fab way for the community to build the community
Awesome, it's a bit past me but looking forward to seeing how this goes 😃

mrjeeves

roxy_r I can't wait!

I think a group PM would work fine. Might it even be possible to set up something like Slack? It's probably better for fast communication as it's more compact than a PM thread.

bluemoonbaz

Nice one roxy_r and great to see two members already onboard .
mrjeeves & @benjamin567

pault1974

roxy_r ive sent you a PD.

munglespoon

roxy_r

I have skills to review code and write in both of these languages. However, could we allow this thread to develop as a place to discuss the matter, please, and discourage people from just posting their thanks and approval?

pault1974

roxy_r I'd like to volunteer for this. 😀

jaymailsays

roxy_r feel free to drop me a PM if you want to have a chat

Hi @roxy_r ,
It is virtually impossible to initiate a PD (private discussion) formerly PM on mobile.
It is fine, if you are replying to a saved message but not when you want to PD a member for the first time.

Any thoughts on when this fault will be addressed?

ujo55

roxy_r
A question related to this proposal regarding security of the platform and members information.
Whilst I am in no way suggesting that anyone of the existing members has anything but the best possible motives in contributing code to further the community interests, what of the future.
Could it be possible that someone could join the community and contribute code for less ethical purposes?
Will those making contributions be vetted, and how will the code they contribute be evaluated to ensure it contains no nasty surprises?
As background checks are carried out on members making charity nominations to ensure they have no undisclosed connection to a charity, according to @t_will, surely much more stringent checks are required for this purpose if the forum and member details are not to be compromised not now but at some point in the future.

stephenpperry

roxy_r THIS. COULD. BE. MONUMENTAL! So cool for the community to have the opportunity to write code for the community! I'm in love!

karenyates

roxy_r
Way over my head but I'll look forward to seeing all the new features.
Thanks in advance to those who are going to be volunteering to do the work.👍👍

roxy_r

kathleen414 that is exactly what got me excited too! 😃

mrjeeves sure, we can start with a group PM and see where we go from there. I think something like Slack would be good once we get into the meaty bit, but there will be a few things that we might want to do before, as we get ourselves ready.

Cheers bluemoonbaz, if you know anyone interested send them my way! Happy to have them

roxy_r

Hey munglespoon, I think at this stage it is great to see people showing their support. Not everyone will have the skills to get involved and I think it is a great thing to see that regardless of that, people are on board with the idea. If I at any point you feel like the conversation could be more productive otherwise let us know and we will jump in. Also, I think the flow will settle once we know who is interested and start working on getting that set up.

Coming back to the project, would you be interested in giving this a go? 🙂

Awesome pault1974 ! I think I will start adding names to the OP just to make sure we capture everyone.

munglespoon

roxy_r Hey munglespoon, I think at this stage it is great to see people showing their support. Not everyone will have the skills to get involved and I think it is a great thing to see that regardless of that, people are on board with the idea. If I at any point you feel like the conversation could be more productive otherwise let us know and we will jump in. Also, I think the flow will settle once we know who is interested and start working on getting that set up.

Coming back to the project, would you be interested in giving this a go? 🙂

My experience reading other parts of the forum means that I am not confident that this settling down will happen, but you are in charge. You can tentatively put me down at the moment so I can start to learn what will be required and then I can give a more firm commitment to specific aspects that I would be comfortable committing to.

roxy_r

munglespoon sure thing!
There will be a bit of time in the beginning for us to figure out what everyone needs to learn until the platform team powers though some of the fixes on the list. You can use that time to also check things out and see if you think it would be of interest to you.

formulaone

Awesome!

It's nice to see you already have some members taking part!

🙂

roxy_r

Hi jaymailsays, I just sent you a PD in case you want to ask something and also gave Alex a nudge to look at why you cannot do that.

ujo55

mrjeeves
I honestly wasn't talking about you, I made that clear I thought, I was talking about what may happen in the future.
My point remains if giffgaff find it necessary o perform background checks on those participating in charity nominations and removing some nominations then surely the same or greater level of scrunity should be applied to anyone writing code.
It was certainly not aimed at you I promise, just concerned about the future.
I've no programming skills alas, just a member who was unjustly named and shamed by giffgaff by implication.
Perhaps roxy_r would like to comment further.

mrjeeves

ujo55

Obviously, since you're talking about me as well as the rest of the members who have volunteered, I'm not the best person to answer this.

Initially, we're just developing a dark theme for teh community. We do this in a styling language called "CSS" (Cascading Style Sheets).

In CSS, there is basically no way to do anything malicious. You can only customise how things look.

My current dark theme is totally open source so anyone can look at what is behind it and you can even contribute: https://github.com/davwheat/giffgaff-flarum-dark-mode

In the future, if we start going more in-depth into the forums, I'm sure there will be peer review stages where people check each others' code for any issues, then likely a stage where some giffstaffers look over it, too.

giffgaff likely has checks planned on us of some description, whether it be a coding test or something else.

I'll let a giffstaffer/roxy give you a more concrete answer as this is more as a guide but rest assured: the chance of anything bad coming out of this is less than members putting all of their details into one of the common scam messages.

munglespoon

ujo55 A question related to this proposal regarding security of the platform and members information.
Whilst I am in no way suggesting that anyone of the existing members has anything but the best possible motives in contributing code to further the community interests, what of the future.
Could it be possible that someone could join the community and contribute code for less ethical purposes?
Will those making contributions be vetted, and how will the code they contribute be evaluated to ensure it contains no nasty surprises?

Open source has a long and proud tradition. Most of the world wide web is based on Apache open source technology, built entirely by volunteers. Wikipedia is built entirely by volunteers and manintains higher degress of accuracy and currency than many news and encyclopedic sites that rely on paid labour. The difference between a volunteer and a paid person is not in their integrity. There is one of the UK's leading experts in this exact field on this community. Unfortunately he's not currently... er... I'll leave that there.

mrjeeves

ujo55 Don't worry. I didn't take any offense because you made an amazing point.

I know that you weren't implying any of us would try to "sabotage" this, so-to-speak, but it is possible and a genuine issue they will have to look at and determine what to do about it.

merew

Awesome, fab way for the community to build the community