Zut! Un mot de trop de la part d’un bogueur blogueur utilisant une version alpha de WordPress, de la fatigue accumulée, et voilà que Dr. Dave, ce bienfaiteur de l’humanité, celui qui nous donnait l’occasion de taquiner les blogueur…

I should preface this post by saying I am not, in any real way, an open source developer. I feel no compulsion to distribute the source of my work for others to modify and distribute on their own without proper monetary compensation. In fact I am rev…

I would hope that the WordPress developers would throw some user-donated cash your way, since WordPress without Spam Karma is going nowhere fast.

thanks a million for Spam Karma – it really has helped me enormously manage the flood of spam comments I was getting.

Hopefully, you will come back to it again soon when the next version of WordPress (1.5) is officially released.

If we are all disappointed that you have stopped development for a well earned rest it is only because we find SK so invaluable.

Thanks again,

Tom.

While I will be sad to see that SK development is halted for now, I am happy to hear that you are taking a long-deserved break from it all. Aside from the blogging software itself (WP), your plugin has been, by far, the most important piece of software to help me in the maintenance of my blog.

The simple ban lists and such that come with WP were fine and dandy, until my readership started growing beyond my expectations. Now, I am averaging upwards of 500 comment spams a week. If it weren’t for SK, I would go absolutely insane trying to manage all the poker/viagra/weight loss solicitations.

Thanks a lot for creating SK. It is the best tool I’ve used so far for spam!

But once again, this is only a symptom of the bigger problem: I shouldn’t have to be developing for pre-alpha code (because this is what it is, official denomination notwithstanding: a beta means feature-frozen and only fixing bugs, I don’t see the current CVS anywhere near that). But things being what they are, because there is a substantial userbase already for 1.3/1.5 (and I do mean *userbase*, not beta-testers), plugin devs all pretty much have to consider supporting them.

And I know, these users shouldn’t be complaining, they are “living on the edge”, and too bad for them if it breaks… But truth is, it’s hard to blame them for not wanting to use the “stable” version of WP, which still has known unfixed bugs and is lightyears behind current dev. Which takes us to the essence of the problem: a sensible release path (with regular, pre-announced, feature-frozen releases), not an attempt at stuff as many features as possible and give a great once-a-year release.

But once again: I can see many reasons why you (and the other devs) would prefer to do otherwise. And I firmly hold it to be your right, as the lead developers of this project. Yes, it annoys me deeply, but my comfort of development or opinion on the matter certainly doesn’t have to be a guiding principle. I just thought it was only fair to expose one of the reason why development of SK is becoming so overly burdened and why I need to take a break from it.

First and foremost, please refrain from posting angry messages on Owen’s blog regarding this entry: this was really in no way the intent of my post.
His rant sure ticked me and acted as the proverbial straw, but was not the primary reason for my decision. Moreover, even if I might disagree strongly on that specific issue, I deeply respect his opinion and work as a developer: Spam Karma owes quite a lot to his own work. So let’s try to keep the dialogue courteous and constructive.

Now:

Owen:

No worries: I didn’t take that as a personal attack. I know how things can get frustrating at a certain hour, and I sure have done my fair share of over-the-board ranting at times…
Now, regarding SK’s dev: one thing you seem to fail to realize is that there was no “release philosophy” for Spam Karma’s latest releases because they were not planned releases. As of approximately 1.7 (that is, way before you installed it, I think), I haven’t implemented a single new feature that wasn’t directly linked to fixing bugs or compatibility issues. I have been holding up on a lot of filters ideas I had (including some that would have been “just a few lines”), for a very specific reason: I feel very strongly about the issue of projects that bloat out of proportions feature-wise, while the overall stability takes a dip…

With the notable exception of TrackBack support, every single release of Spam Karma made over the past few weeks was only a bug-fixing one. Of course, in a few instances, the bug-fix itself induced other bugs (can’t prevent that), and in a very few cases, I didn’t run the tests on every single versions of WP (sometimes I really don’t have the time, and an untested bug-fix is better than no fix at all), resulting in temporary breakage of a release. But in all honesty, I doubt you ever ran into one of these: these broken releases were usually fixed within hours, if not minutes, of being put online. In fact, you are pretty much the first person that mention an update breaking a previously working install of SK+WP…
On the other hand, WP’s updates have regularly brought changes, some good, some entirely unasked for, that have broken compatibility. You the first should be aware that this is a very obvious risk of running alpha code, and in this regard, your comment regarding the fact that SK wasn’t necessarily up to the latest alpha was pretty much out of place: I certainly have other things to do than avidly download the latest CVS each day to see if there’s a surprise change in there that I need to fix at once.

Matt:
Precisely, it is a forum for announcing and possibly discussing major alterations to the code and, in particular, aspects that pertain to core-plugin interactions. I haven’t seen a single communication from the dev team in there regarding half of the changes made to the code, except sometime after they were made.
I am perfectly aware that one cannot expect alpha version APIs to be carved in stone, but recently, *way* too many instances of unilateral code changes inducing breakage of SK have happened without any other way for me to realize this, other than by testing it myself every other hour on CVS code. It would perhaps be a bit easier to stomach, if on the other hand there was a sensible release schedule, but the fact there hasn’t been a single significant release in about 6 months, while on the other hand, the CVS is blowing up out of proportions, pushes way too many people toward nightlies or CVS code, and result in the kind of problems I am currently whining about.
I might have missed them, but so far I haven’t seen a single release schedule, feature roadmap (one that has any connection with reality), prioritization of tasks or communication on any of the above to the WP development community at large.
As mentioned in this entry above, I am personally dissatisfied with the way communication on WP development goes, but I also realize I only have a very marginal say in the matter, which is why I prefer, in the current state of things, take some distance from WP’s code in my own developments. Just thought I would clearly state the reason.

To Everybody Else

Thanks a lot for the your kind words and support. I also want to make it clear that, while the whining about flaws in a piece of code that is generously provided to them free of charge and for the sole sake of helping the community definitely tick me off, they are not the primary reason for this break on SK’s development: for each of these ungrateful assholes, there’s been loads of great people showing their support and appreciation in all kind of ways, and that totally makes up for it.
It’s just that as I was telling Owen above: I have been unable to focus on anything else than SK support and bug-fixing over the past weeks of development. And too much of this bug-fixing was called by things I had no power over (e.g. WP Alpha development). While on the other hand, I was unable to spend any time improving SK or developing other efficient tools to deal with spam.
So, no need to bother with the whiners: I will be developing more stuff in the future, including spam-fighting tools. And at one point I might pick up where I left out with a hopefully heavily rewritten Spam Karma 2…

In the meantime, Spam Karma 1.17 as it stands, still stops efficiently 100% of all spam attempts on this blog and hasn’t caught a single false positive in a while, so there’s no reason it shouldn’t work for most of you too…

Again, bravo.

I tried to use trackback, but obviously I don’t have enough knowledge to make it work. However, I’m not going to complain. Just to keep this conversation going, my article is at: http://www.radicalwacko.com/blog/index.php?p=1111

thanks again for the great product, and I’ll be sure to hit the tip jar again sometime

Y’all come back now, y’hear?

WordPress users and plug-in developers are growing weary of software with no recent stable release available. Don’t get me wrong, Wordpress is great blog software. But trying to keep up with the problems created by the constant changes in the CVS ver…

cheers