Last year was a interesting year and a year that I had enough discussions about things that I disliked in the WordPress community. And I know that some people got offended by it and think I nag about everything. The interesting part is that my friends outside WordPress know be in a complete different way. In this post I describe how I am and why I do the things I did and will continue to do. I’m not going to change because someone likes that, I have principles and I will always follow those.
Take care of friends
The first one is the most important one to me. I will always take care of friends no matter what. If that means a blog post that can be interpreted wrong then I will do that. This is also the part why a lot of my friends do think differently. For example almost five years ago I studied abroad and meet a lot of great people that I now can call my friends. We had lots of parties and I always helped out if needed. I always try to step up if someone had problems.
I guess this can even be related to the moment I stepped up to be the lead developer of GlotPress. It was and still is something that needs to be improved and it’s really important for a big part of the WordPress community.
Take care of others
Besides friends I love to contribute back to good causes. If you read my post about 2013 Overview and 2014 Goals I talked about doing more. A few days after that post on christmas day I decided to do my first major contribution to a project and that was CFCommunity on Indiegogo. I decided to pick the “The hall of fame” perk. It’s a lot of money but sometimes you need to be a bit crazy to make things happen and in this case give someone an awesome christmas present ;).
Honesty/Trust
The thing I value the most is honesty and I guess this is the thing that goes wrong in my interactions with the WordPress community. A lot of people care about their own interests and/or making promises they don’t keep. You always expect that everyone tries to do their best for the community but that is not always the case. This result in a lack of trust in some of the people.
Straight forward
This is probably something Dutch and that is that I’m straight forward. To me it doesn’t make sense to say something by not saying it or using a complete dialog for one sentence. I will share my opinion when needed or when someone asks. If I dislike something I say it but I will always try it in a way constructive way. Obviously there are cases where I didn’t do this. Some with good reasons and some without any reason at all.
Repeat if needed
In the community some people hate that I repeat issues I have. In a lot of cases I didn’t repeat at all. It all depends on the definition of it. I’m sure I mentioned stuff a few times on IRC but to different people. Is that then repeating? I don’t think so. If someone asks for my opinion or why I’m not sure about things then I will share my thoughts on that. If that mean telling about what happened a year ago then I will do so. For some people who are always on IRC it will be repeating.
Conclusion
I guess I always had a good balance between work and private ;). In most cases I don’t mean any harm. In the cases I do then most likely the person asked for it and I’m then not the only one thinking the same as me. Most likely I’m the only one expression it. I always try to do the best for the WordPress community and I do believe my attentions are always good.