You aren't someone in the Joomla community until Amy Stephen, Queen of the Universe, kicks your ass.
Welcome to the ranks, Seth.
There is no reason for my harsh comments to remain, it's not fair to Seth. What I had to say described a single perspective of a much more rich, complex experience. There is no doubt that Seth makes the Joomla project better. He's one of my favorite people and enjoy having him in my world.
It is very, very hard, IMO, to figure out how to make it through the complex social and technical and procedural hoops of Joomla (or any open source project) to have impact.
For me, Kyle's accomplishments and experience is something to study.
- He was not an inside man when he started. So, can't say anyone really held the door open for him.
- He replaced the *entire* backend and frontend of Joomla, for crying out loud. Every single bit of rendered content. For perspective, a patch for a small HTML markup might take MONTHS to vett, especially if a debate on the value of standards breaks out. (Seth - It was also a shock to me that we don't all just automatically agree on that point.)
- DUDES. jQuery. Never in a million years.
Had he asked my advise, I would have said, don't try it. You'll be wasting your time.
There is something there we can learn that is far more important than semantics, although I COMPLETELY AGREE with high standards for all phases of development. But mainly, when I look at this effort, I see someone who found by staying positive, and true to his goal, and never allowing himself to give up or be discouraged for very long, and communicating, and then communicating some more, going to the people wherever their natural habitat was (five stars there) - he just decided it was going to work and I'll be damned, he was right.
The lesson I learned in watching him was that all the things I had said about how Joomla development or leadership were creating problems for contributors was absolute bullshit, it was me.
