There seems to be far fewer threads in some forums lately, for example in the "Quiz and question banks" forum. What might explain this decrease?
It would be optimistic to think that currently the Moodle experts outnumber the newbies.
I agree the threads have decreased significantly.
Some of the familiar posters from the past have moved on to other LMS platforms. (Randy/Melanie)
I agree the threads have decreased significantly.
Some of the familiar posters from the past have moved on to other LMS platforms. (Randy/Melanie)
And/or people ask ChatGPT?
It is becoming fashion to say, "Gemini told me this. What do you think?"
ChatGPT, of course! It seems like the demon has taken over a big part of the discussions, probably because it provides good enough answers, otherwise people would come back to the forums, which they don’t.
Right now, you could say ChatGPT and the forums complement each other, but what about in the long run? Are we at the beginning of the end for the Moodle forums, or at the start of their transformation into something different?
Right now, you could say ChatGPT and the forums complement each other, but what about in the long run? Are we at the beginning of the end for the Moodle forums, or at the start of their transformation into something different?
HAS ANYBODY DELETED A LONG POST BY ME HERE?
Could you at least mail the text back to me? I was editing, and having session problems (as reported in the Moodle community sites) and expecting the text in the forum mail.
Could you at least mail the text back to me? I was editing, and having session problems (as reported in the Moodle community sites) and expecting the text in the forum mail.
Som svar til Visvanath Ratnaweera
Decrease in activity on some forums
No idea what has happened to your post Visvanath. Maybe it just got lost in a temporary internet failure. I doubt a moderator would have removed it unless it was reported, and I have no idea if it was or not.
Dear Visvanath,
Over the years its happened a few times to me because of connection issues. Sometimes when going back then a part of the draft would still be there. If your post was deleted by a human then they would have told you. For long posts, I write them in a text editor / word processor first, saving as I go. Then Ctrl-A -> Ctrl-C -> Ctrl Shift V to ensure no formatting comes across. Or for shorter posts, I select all and copy to the clipboard as temporary storage before posting in case something happens then.
Kind regards,
Gareth
Over the years its happened a few times to me because of connection issues. Sometimes when going back then a part of the draft would still be there. If your post was deleted by a human then they would have told you. For long posts, I write them in a text editor / word processor first, saving as I go. Then Ctrl-A -> Ctrl-C -> Ctrl Shift V to ensure no formatting comes across. Or for shorter posts, I select all and copy to the clipboard as temporary storage before posting in case something happens then.
Kind regards,
Gareth
Hi both
Coming from moderators present and past, I believe you. But you must understand:
once burnt, twice shy
Coming from moderators present and past, I believe you. But you must understand:
once burnt, twice shy
twice burnt, then what, seeing ghosts?
@Gareth, when I think of it, I take a post in to the clip-board. And thought of it because the browser was behaving like swimming in tar. I was editing another post, in a second browser tab. Since I thought I saw this one accepted, released the clip-board to store the other post. In fact, I mailed the text to myself. As Murphy wants is the longer post, which needed some search on moodle.org, it never materialized.
Anyway, there were too many things. Good lesson. So one thing after the other. One point was to re-iterate that we are talking of three things, and pointed to (hopefully) the main topic and the two sub-threads:
- We are in the "main" branch, the one Dominique has started, about the "normal" (user) community.
NEW: Eric's post is also about the user community, great points, BTW.
- First sub-topic is the developer community, I think Tom has started it here.
- Second sub-topic Moodle Partners on moodle.org or something like that. I think Petr has brought that here.
I know, I know, this is the Lounge. Still my wires sent pulses in all directions and come to a stand still when topics multiply.
I think this is the explanation to my lost post(s): https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=473436#p1896832. I permanently get stuck at screens like this https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=473207#p1895944. The "Success" with the green ticked circle signals me, what else, Success. But I should be aware that the red text "Please the box to verify you are human" without any "box", still means, No!
Yeah, yeah, as I said, "Deflate the tires, that'll deter the joyriders". https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=472158#p1896804
Yeah, yeah, as I said, "Deflate the tires, that'll deter the joyriders". https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=472158#p1896804
Edit: The same fate almost happened to this post too:
Hi,
That's the kind of "protection" that only protects against legitimate users. And it looks like the same people who trust Cloudflare don't trust Cloudflare itself: before login there's that validation that takes forever, after login it keeps reappearing every minute, and now they've even added a CAPTCHA (Cloudflare's own) as a "validation" to post on the forum.
So that's one more thing that kills the legitimate user experience. You take time to write a well-thought-out reply, review it, tweak it, and in the meantime the validator expires. When you hit submit, you get "invalid token" and either lose the text or get stuck in a retry loop. In other words, the people genuinely contributing are the ones getting punished.
In the end, this doesn't stop AI/bots from consuming the site's content. The forum CAPTCHA just becomes yet another barrier for people who already made it through the endless login check. A "bot" that can breeze through all of that will get through this CAPTCHA even more easily… and the community is the one paying the price.
Regards,
Eduardo Kraus
You all seem to agree that there is indeed a decline in activity on some forums. A number of causes have been mentioned and are probably all valid to varying degrees: support provided by internal teams, recourse to artificial intelligence, search engines, and social media platforms, the impact of CAPTCHAs, and so on.
I also wonder whether the forums are sufficiently welcoming, or even sufficiently proactive. For newcomers, starting a first discussion can be somewhat intimidating. Posts often receive no reply at all, which may lead people to wonder whether there is any point in asking a question. When replies do come, they are not always helpful. And, unfortunately, in my opinion there are far too many rude responses from so-called experts. Another possible reason, therefore, is that people who are treated dismissively or disrespectfully on the forums may simply choose not to return.
Another reason may be that I personally have proposed too many JavaScript snippet workarounds, particularly in the Quiz forum. Some of these snippets become unusable with new versions of Moodle, although they were never intended to be anything other than temporary solutions, which can understandably reduce users’ confidence. Finally, some users may hesitate to ask questions for fear that I will suggest temporary workarounds that experts have dryly criticized as potentially unsafe or ill-advised.
Your second paragraph, Dominique, is particularly pertinent I feel. The question is does HQ have enough motivation to foster an active and welcoming environment to a forum-based community where people are giving help for free, when they could pay for help instead. And if not HQ, then who in the existing forum-based community?
Mary,
Thank you for your response. Indeed, my third paragraph was unnecessary. Regarding the second one, any changes naturally depend on the perceived necessity and the resources available.
A few suggestions that might help improve participation include:
- Adding more links to forums in the Moodle documentation to encourage questions.
- Enhancing the quiz interface.
- Implementing AI-generated automatic responses, similar to current search engine features.
- Sorting discussion posts by usefulness, as on Stack Overflow.
These measures would not solve all issues but could still make a positive difference.
(This is the second part of my "lost post".)
Hi Dominique
You wrote:
> Right now, you could say ChatGPT and the forums complement each other
Why not, if that works for them? Some people prefer machines over humans, as much repulsive as that feels (to me) do we want to change them? Can we?
Where I don't have sympathy are, "I did what ChatGPT asked me to do, now where can I go?" cases, and no tolerance towards questions like, "ChatGPT told me this, what do you think?" type of second opinions. What I would love to write in such cases is unspeakable.
> Are we at the beginning of the end for the Moodle forums, or at the start of their transformation into something different?
We were told by the visionaries that this development is like the invention of printing. I am not a visionary, too petty, to see the world from galaxies, spanning light years.
Hi Dominique
You wrote:
> Right now, you could say ChatGPT and the forums complement each other
Why not, if that works for them? Some people prefer machines over humans, as much repulsive as that feels (to me) do we want to change them? Can we?
Where I don't have sympathy are, "I did what ChatGPT asked me to do, now where can I go?" cases, and no tolerance towards questions like, "ChatGPT told me this, what do you think?" type of second opinions. What I would love to write in such cases is unspeakable.
> Are we at the beginning of the end for the Moodle forums, or at the start of their transformation into something different?
We were told by the visionaries that this development is like the invention of printing. I am not a visionary, too petty, to see the world from galaxies, spanning light years.
Breaking... In the meantime Meta Begins $65 Million Election Push To Advance AI Agenda.
I have second thoughts on:
> Why not, if that works for them? Some people prefer machines over humans,
Just hours ago I responded with a help call with a series of questions to understand his situation. In the reply the OP just wanted to continue disregarding all those questions. I wonder whether this shift to communicating with machines will also change the culture of a dialog - like disregard of the other party's feelings.
> Why not, if that works for them? Some people prefer machines over humans,
Just hours ago I responded with a help call with a series of questions to understand his situation. In the reply the OP just wanted to continue disregarding all those questions. I wonder whether this shift to communicating with machines will also change the culture of a dialog - like disregard of the other party's feelings.
I hope not Visvanath. Yours is a voice that needs to be heard! (Coming from one who has learnt a lot from said voice - thank you again.)
"I wonder whether this shift to communicating with machines will also change the culture of a dialog"
I don't think so, there are and always have been people who don't listen to responses and want an instant fix at zero financial and time cost.
I was recently playing with an idea for a Moodle plugin I called mod_yesno based on "20 questions", where an LLM could only reply with either Yes, No or a game ending, "Yes you guessed correctly". The idea was to encourage good question asking.
Hi. I'm not really part of the Moodle community, so take this comment with lots of salt. I think Moodle lost the hobby developers a decade ago, and you are just now starting to see the results.
I write (free) educational software as a hobby. I wrote a useful tool about 20 years ago, which needed to be updated. A tool for teaching phonics to older students with severe reading deficits. My original used JQuery and JQuery Mobile. The server side (handling the database) was early PHP 7. But the tool has helped hundreds of students. It's the 'BLENDING' course at http://communityreading.org if anyone cares.
How to modernize? WordPress? Joomla? I thought of converting to SCORM, but needed some persistence data for each student. And poking around, I saw a comment here, something along the lines of "if you want something shiny, write it in SCORM, but if you want something solid then use Moodle". That sounded appealing and truthy.
So at the start of COVID, I converted it into a Moodle 3 'mod'. Took about 6 months (it's a hobby, but that gives an idea of the size of the project). I was enchanted with Moodle, it was easy to learn and unintrusive. It provided the frameworks for managing users, databases, installation, upgrades, reporting, deleting old records, and more. Use what you like, everything just worked.
Moodle 3 was, frankly, "Wordpress for Education". I know that phrase has baggage here, but I considered that a good thing. And MoodleNet had been announced, so I would soon have a way to share my gem with the world.
During the conversion, Moodle 4 was released. OK. I updated, but Moodle was becoming much less fun. The API's were more demanding, and there was a trend to requiring compliance with them. MariaDB version requirements meant I couldn't load my mod at my ISP, and still can't. (Yes, I know about hacking 'environment.php'). MoodleNet didn't support sharing mods, and there isn't a comparable 'marketplace' for plug-ins.
At one point I decided to up my game. I tried to contact the author of the Moodle textbook I was using, to hire him to guide me through the compliance program. But sadly he had passed away, Then Moodle 5 was released for beta. I felt beaten.
So I have a useful Moodle mod that I have never shown anyone, can't even publish to my own website without a hack. Actually several mods. I wrote a drill for my neice to practice the 10-times tables, and a similar one for fractions. I wrote an interactive textbook for teaching programming; it's on the backburner until I port it out of Moodle. I have other tools that would be fun as Moodle mods - like this: https://cheeseandcrackers.ca/playground/
Maybe it's not a big deal. The other guys are corporations, they don't have hobby developers either. But then what makes Moodle different? And where are your future forum posters going to come from?
I write (free) educational software as a hobby. I wrote a useful tool about 20 years ago, which needed to be updated. A tool for teaching phonics to older students with severe reading deficits. My original used JQuery and JQuery Mobile. The server side (handling the database) was early PHP 7. But the tool has helped hundreds of students. It's the 'BLENDING' course at http://communityreading.org if anyone cares.
How to modernize? WordPress? Joomla? I thought of converting to SCORM, but needed some persistence data for each student. And poking around, I saw a comment here, something along the lines of "if you want something shiny, write it in SCORM, but if you want something solid then use Moodle". That sounded appealing and truthy.
So at the start of COVID, I converted it into a Moodle 3 'mod'. Took about 6 months (it's a hobby, but that gives an idea of the size of the project). I was enchanted with Moodle, it was easy to learn and unintrusive. It provided the frameworks for managing users, databases, installation, upgrades, reporting, deleting old records, and more. Use what you like, everything just worked.
Moodle 3 was, frankly, "Wordpress for Education". I know that phrase has baggage here, but I considered that a good thing. And MoodleNet had been announced, so I would soon have a way to share my gem with the world.
During the conversion, Moodle 4 was released. OK. I updated, but Moodle was becoming much less fun. The API's were more demanding, and there was a trend to requiring compliance with them. MariaDB version requirements meant I couldn't load my mod at my ISP, and still can't. (Yes, I know about hacking 'environment.php'). MoodleNet didn't support sharing mods, and there isn't a comparable 'marketplace' for plug-ins.
At one point I decided to up my game. I tried to contact the author of the Moodle textbook I was using, to hire him to guide me through the compliance program. But sadly he had passed away, Then Moodle 5 was released for beta. I felt beaten.
So I have a useful Moodle mod that I have never shown anyone, can't even publish to my own website without a hack. Actually several mods. I wrote a drill for my neice to practice the 10-times tables, and a similar one for fractions. I wrote an interactive textbook for teaching programming; it's on the backburner until I port it out of Moodle. I have other tools that would be fun as Moodle mods - like this: https://cheeseandcrackers.ca/playground/
Maybe it's not a big deal. The other guys are corporations, they don't have hobby developers either. But then what makes Moodle different? And where are your future forum posters going to come from?
Hello Tom,
I have noticed that you are not using GPL license for your mod_blending plugin:
This program is licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 instead of Moodle's more permissive GNU licence because it contains materials that are also licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA.
That does not seem to be in line with the GPL license because vast majority of plugins for Moodle are considered to be derivative works due to direct usage of Moodle APIs. If there are non-code resources in your plugins, then those should be probably OK to be licensed under a different license. See FSF FAQ related to GPL plugins.
Anyway, I agree with what you are saying. These days a lot of the Moodle development seems to be happening behind the closed doors of Moodle HQ, partners and other commercial providers. Contributing patches and ideas to Moodle core is harder than ever before. I do not think that Moodle is unique in this respect due to the evolution of web technologies over the past 30 years and general pressure to make open-source software profitable.
Non-tech people struggling with installation and upgrades of Moodle is a real problem for the community. Commercial providers and HQ are making most of the money by offering SaaS solutions and managing hosting, so they are unlikely to share their know-how or provide free support. Volunteer developers usually know how to set up their servers, so again they have no motivation to create free software that adds support for Moodle management via cPanel/Plesk and similar web hosting frontends.
Do you participate in the Moodle Dev Chat? It feels much more lively there compared to these forums.
Ouch… This might not just be the end of the forums as we know them. It could be the end of Moodle as we know it altogether. If there are fewer and fewer hobby developers, what’s the point of continuing to be one... if the whole thing just collapses?
Oh Dominique - faut pas désespérer!
We at Moodle HQ still witness deep engagement by hobby developers, it just comes through a wider range of channels. For example, our Moodle AI Matrix chat is buzzing with messages every day. It's one of my new favourite places to lurk.
We at Moodle HQ still witness deep engagement by hobby developers, it just comes through a wider range of channels. For example, our Moodle AI Matrix chat is buzzing with messages every day. It's one of my new favourite places to lurk.
We've also invested in providing our Moodle developer community with better support. We established a new Community Contributions team in October last year, and Mick, our Product Manager for the team, will probably reply to this thread the moment he sees it. He has a ton of things going on in his team that will make contributing to Moodle more engaging (and they are just getting started!).
One of the statistics I keep an eye on to sense check the vibrancy of our developer community is the number of plugins that get approved for the Plugin Directory each month. It's a number that helps me assess both how active the community is and how well we respond to their needs. We used to average about 11 plugin approvals per month back in early 2024, that number has shot up to 25 plugin approvals per month since then.
So things have actually improved in that space. And they are about to get even better with the upcoming launch of Moodle Marketplace. If you haven't heard about that initiative yet, please take a look at this presentation from MoodleMoot Global last year.
Just to follow up from what Marie mentioned, it is still early days for the Community Contributions team, but we are already working hard on a few initiatives to increase both community developer engagement (for example the recently re-launched community developer meetings as well as working with various developers to bring their plugins or other work into the core LMS) , and to encourage more developers to stay involved or join our great community. That of course includes newer and "hobby" oriented developers, and some of the initiatives relevant to those groups include an in-progress initiative to make it easier to find ways to contribute to the core Moodle LMS, as well as some planned future work on a handbook (among other things).
Much more to come over the long term of course, and if anyone would like to learn more about my team's broader goals and some of the upcoming initiatives, I gave a talk about it at last year's Moodlemoot Global and the recording is on Youtube:
I've been following this forum thread the last couple of weeks and there's some great questions and observations, and although I think any reduction in fresh posts in some forums is likely due to an uptick in other methods like asking AI/GPTs or using other platforms like Matrix, it's also helpful to know that people do still think there's value in the forum format. I'm of course also open to suggestions about ways we can better engage with the community, whether through forums or other means (in my case particularly for developers and translators, since that's the focus of my team).
PS - Tom, by being here in the forum, whether just reading through discussions or starting and engaging in one like you have here, you're definitely part of the Moodle community!
Dear Michael,
Re: "Just to follow up from what Marie mentioned".
Interesting and thank you. When I get a moment I'll watch the recording.
One quick thing that has struck me is the question (to all): Do you trust the answer more of AI/GPTs or the very human that created the functionality / was involved in its design / conception?
Kind regards,
Gareth
Hello,
Interesting Tom. I have found the code getting more and more progressively complex over the years. One big difficult change is the Course format API - https://moodledev.io/docs/apis/plugintypes/format – which employs the reactive user interface (https://moodledev.io/docs/guides/javascript/reactive). This is an event driven model where a change in the ‘state’ is then reacted to by the other elements on the page. It’s like throwing a pebble in a still pond and then watching the ripples propagate outwards and effecting what they encounter. This takes time and that’s the problem. Time in education is precious, especially when you have a pile of other planning, marking and reports to do. It’s not just a case of design a course and then run it, you have to be dynamic and adapt to changes / needs of the students to provide additional material to support them. Back in version 1.8 / 1.9, Moodle was quick and easy to use, certainly much quicker than a competitor that was in the running to be the eLearning platform for my employer. It’s that which helped me to convince my bosses that Moodle was the better platform and the one to go for.
Now with the Course format API and reactive UI, it’s sluggish again – for me at least, admittedly on a development Windows machine with caching on. The object orientation has been taken to the nTh degree of granularity, with each component often making an AJAX call to update themselves. Each component often has three files, php, mustache and Javascript – making understanding of the overall output difficult to comprehended. A better solution would be for bigger objects that have more methods and encapsulate elements that are only used in a given place. Or for the change requests to be bundled up in a single AJAX network call and then returned to have everything update at once without increased network contention probability and the ‘ripple effect’ on the screen.
It is still possible to install Moodle locally (even on Windows) and develop for it. I run my own custom WAMP, though you can get ‘AMP’s from https://download.moodle.org/releases/latest/. Though the move to ‘public’ in M5.1 was a little challenge. Plus running Behat tests really needs to be done in Linux – I use a virtual machine.
On the subject of information sharing that Petr has indicated, I do write technical posts on eLearningWorld (run by HRDNZ, a Moodle partner - I’m independent though and write them in my free time), such as about how to install and use xDebug (https://www.elearningworld.org/xdebug/) and Behat (https://www.elearningworld.org/behat-part-one/, https://www.elearningworld.org/behat-part-two/ and https://www.elearningworld.org/behat-revisited/) - revisiting them myself at times.
Coming to the main subject of this post, I have noticed (especially as a moderator) a decline in the posts on the forums. This seemed to happen sometime last year, perhaps starting in the late spring and getting progressively quieter. I’m not really sure why and am intrigued as to the reason or reasons.
Admittedly I’m not in the Moodle AI Matrix chat, as I prefer to think about what to reply and form something that can then be seen and found by others long after the moment has passed. A means of write once benefit many. I can find that interactive chat can be distracting and break your train of thought when solving a problem. To me the forums add value as they become a source of information that can be searched and referenced. They are a bridge between developer chat and documentation. They are also a means by which users can engage with developers without the ‘fear’ of joining a chat conversation that makes no sense to them.
I would love to see the forums become more vibrant again, to bring back that overall community connection that everyone can engage in, supporting each other, sharing different experiences, ideas, perspectives and innovations.
Cheers,
Gareth
I love the term "Wordpress for education", while at the same time understanding that will not be everyones reaction.
Hi, thanks everyone for engaging with this. I'm hesitant to post here since I am not from 'The Moodle Community'. But there doesn't seem to be much of a Moodle Community here anymore, and it's up to whoever is still here to be the change we want.
Marie, I looked at the Plugins Directory and the video you shared. Great idea. But it highlights what I consider the problem. I think there are two types of plugins - ones that customize Moodle for production, and ones that are quirky passion projects for hobbyists building something magical with Moodle. Everything in the plugin directory is a first-type plugin. There is a small category called 'Other' at the very, very bottom, and it is still mostly first-type plugins, only harder to characterize.
Don't misunderstand. Those first-type plugins are a wonderful resource, amazing, and necessary. They are certainly not the problem. But where are the quirky hobby projects?
For example, a friend is working on a passion-project website documenting Argentine Tango figures. Eventually, it will offer videos, discussions, and lessons. Why isn't he building it on Moodle?
Dominique once tried to launch a courseware project using just questions (what happened to that?). Great idea, but probably needed some plugin work to make it smooth and complete. Except, how would someone building that plugin share their courses with the Moodle community?
Do we want those hobbyists on Moodle? Can they co-exist with the 'serious' developers? OK to say 'No, that's not what Moodle is, not what Moodle does'.
Marie, I looked at the Plugins Directory and the video you shared. Great idea. But it highlights what I consider the problem. I think there are two types of plugins - ones that customize Moodle for production, and ones that are quirky passion projects for hobbyists building something magical with Moodle. Everything in the plugin directory is a first-type plugin. There is a small category called 'Other' at the very, very bottom, and it is still mostly first-type plugins, only harder to characterize.
Don't misunderstand. Those first-type plugins are a wonderful resource, amazing, and necessary. They are certainly not the problem. But where are the quirky hobby projects?
For example, a friend is working on a passion-project website documenting Argentine Tango figures. Eventually, it will offer videos, discussions, and lessons. Why isn't he building it on Moodle?
Dominique once tried to launch a courseware project using just questions (what happened to that?). Great idea, but probably needed some plugin work to make it smooth and complete. Except, how would someone building that plugin share their courses with the Moodle community?
Do we want those hobbyists on Moodle? Can they co-exist with the 'serious' developers? OK to say 'No, that's not what Moodle is, not what Moodle does'.
Dear Tom,
Re: "I think there are two types of plugins - ones that customize Moodle for production, and ones that are quirky passion projects for hobbyists building something magical with Moodle".
Ah, there are not two types of plugin, rather that plugins are broken down into types. Please see: https://moodledev.io/docs/5.2/apis/plugintypes. I think possibly that 'Other' relates to plugins that support other plugins, but I could be wrong. All plugins can be for production installs and the developer can state its 'Maturity' -> https://moodledev.io/docs/5.2/apis/commonfiles/version.php#maturity - 'Stable' being for production sites, 'Release candidate' for test sites and 'Beta' and 'Alpha' versions for development sites - in my view.
Therefore anybody can make and publish a plugin. It just has to go through an approval and peer review process if to be placed on Moodle dot org. Please see https://moodledev.io/general/community/plugincontribution.
Kind regards,
Gareth
@Gareth - you make some good points and indeed, re I would love to see the forums become more vibrant again, to bring back that overall community connection that everyone can engage in, supporting each other, sharing different experiences, ideas, perspectives and innovations. I very much agree and have also noticed that there has been a decrease in activity in the forums. I am only speculating but it might be partly because forums are nowadays a rather old fashioned way of getting help - people prefer the instant messaging type like Matrix, or more general outlets like Facebook/ Reddit/Stack Overflow. That's a shame. Another reason might be because newbies might be a little shy to post if they view the forums as a group of experienced Moodlers who are talking to each other: will they be welcome? I hardly ever see regular teachers on here, probably because they have no free time, they don't use Moodle for the reasons you said or because they get their help from someone in their insititution or get a paid help service. Admins and devs maybe seek help in those other places. (Oh and another plug for the Get Involved in Moodle.org forums course here - webinar below) And another, other reason, which might be contentious, is the need for Moodle HQ to engage more with the forums in Moodle.org to show they are listening and committed to the open source project. That's more difficult as they are very busy with working on Moodle, but I think it's nice to see a few HQ faces/names on here to consolidate that trust. And there are some! I know there are PAG groups; I know there is the Community contributions team (for developers and language strings ) but again they are something different. It is of course just possible that in its 'refocusing' HQ is deciding to concentrate on other things, and we have to accept that. We should perhaps investigate the other sources of Moodle conversations and see if we can assist there?
Last year, I started actively participating in the Moodle community again after 10 years. The thing I noticed immediately was that Moodle Partners now seem a lot less active here (Catalyst being the exception). Why is that? Partners should have good insight into end user needs - these forums used to be the best place for them to ask developers to fix things, ask for explanations or new features. Do partners have a different way to talk to Moodle HQ now? Do they only use tracker and matrix chat? Or is my memory of the early Moodle days rose-tinted?
@Petr - my impression has always been that Partners don't engage much on here (with the exception of Catalyst and a couple of other individuals) because they don't want to give free support to the open-source community (understandable I suppose) and also because they don't want to ask questions or request explanations etc because they don't want to show potential clients that they might not be as expert as they wish to be seen (also understandable). I actually personally appreciate it when Partners respond here because I feel it shows them in a good light. (btw Partners have always had their own site private to them and HQ, or at least for as long as I can remember.)
Partners are definitely active in Tracker and in some cases Matrix, but I also think we have refined the interactions between Partners and the Products department over time as well. Partners are also part of our community, so the Community Contributions team is starting to engage directly and earlier for some initiatives and that's only going to improve over time as we also build and refine our processes further.
Dear Mary and everyone,
I hope that I and others here are always welcoming on the forums (I always strive to take the time to find out the name of a person when replying or posting as appropriate), that it is not a scary place full of developers. That its about the functionality not the solutions that implement the functionality. The beauty of the forums to me is two fold: Time zone immune as posts can be responded to at any time and seen when the OP is asleep, thus getting a wider audience. Subject management in terms of organising the flow of a linear chat into discrete buckets – unless the chat has ‘topic areas’. To me the time zone positive was also a good thing about the iMoots when they operated. They were a good way of engaging with lots of people from around the world and yet you could still manage to be awake at two in the morning and be fine.
I did consider going to the UK Moot (the Global 2025 one) but didn’t due to cost and personal reasons. I would have enjoyed travelling the length of the country by train as a green (less rolling resistance) means of transportation. There is also the nature of a Moot / Conference with being highly social with lots of attendees, which can be overwhelming, with lots of noise to contend with – I have Tinnitus, so need to manage my environment (A classroom teacher has ‘power’, so can do the same). An iMoot is far more manageable and allows you to control your level of participation without the worry of misinterpreting social clues. To me, iMoots are more inclusional in this respect. Thus forums come under the same umbrella. They can embrace everyone.
Forums also allow more targeted responses from people whom are knowledgeable in the area. Yes chat solutions / other social media you may get a faster response. But here on these forums there is the element of trust with replies from people that have been peer reviewed to be talking sense – badges / really helpful Moodler / useful ratings all help. This functionality specific and targeted to Moodle makes it different from other places on the same topic. A teacher can, when they get a moment (I know! ) can post, then return later to see a reply from someone they can assign an association to the subject upon. Like when I reply about the very plugins I create. I should know what I’m talking about
.
I used to recognise lots of names from HQ, but there now seems to be so much change and then you see a post / reply by a HQ employee and you wonder who they are and are unaware that such a position / role existed. I do think there does need to be more HQ engagement and understanding of the community and the people within it, some of whom have been here for a very long time and contributed a lot. HQ, please correct me if I’m wrong in this regard.
Kind regards,
Gareth
@Gareth: There is a mini-moot in Leeds on March 11 which I am going to and I know a couple of UK based HQ team members are also attending https://www.eventbrite.com/e/moodle-leeds-tickets-1977279366813
I am hoping new HQ team members who post will add profile pictures and a bit of description in their profiles to help the long-term Moodlers.
I am hoping new HQ team members who post will add profile pictures and a bit of description in their profiles to help the long-term Moodlers.
Re: 'Mini-moot'.
Thanks Mary, Leeds is still quite a trek for me - I'm well below the M4! Hopefully something closer one day.
Thanks Mary, Leeds is still quite a trek for me - I'm well below the M4! Hopefully something closer one day.
@Tom anyone who posts (nicely!) here is a member of the Moodle Community , so you are too, and you are very welcome 
Hi Tom
It is good to hear a perspective from "outside the community", as there is a danger we live in our own bubble. Becoming part of this community is only a matter of reading and the odd comment. I got my first contribution into the plugins database in 2012 and it delights me that people can find that and the others. However there are also valuable plugins elsewhere, typically on Github that have not been submitted for various reasons. There was over 18 months between my public demonstration of my AI Text question type and submission to the Plugins database
See the announcement here
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=455612
(A plug for a plugin ....)
The delay was significantly because I wanted the plugin to mature and ideally that would reduce the maintenance. There are other reasons to delay or not submit. One reason is that people who know how to install from Git are typically more technically knowledgeable and are so less likely to consume developer time with question (speculation on my part).
I suspect the rise of LLM Assistance in plugin development may result in an uptick in plugin development.
With reference to a decline in questions asked in these forums I would speculate that people are asking the Large Language Models first, and they are probably scraping forums like this.
Might be helpful to be more specific: You are talking of the _developer_ community, right, as opposed to _other_: helpers here on moodle.org, user groups outside moodle.org, "official" groups like PAG (formerly MUA), power users who speak favourably of Moodle, etc.?
Som svar til Visvanath Ratnaweera
Decrease in activity on some forums
Indeed, as Visvanath says - and as I am sure Moodle HQ understands - the Moodle community is not only about developers.
Som svar til Mary Cooch (personal account)
Decrease in activity on some forums
av Visvanath Ratnaweera -
In that case this "developer community" is a sub-thread. The OP was, "There seems to be far fewer threads in some forums lately, for example in the "Quiz and question banks" forum. What might explain this decrease?" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=472158, which is about the other communities.
Not that, people can't exercise their first amendment rights here, but not on multiple topics in the same discussion!
;-(
Not that, people can't exercise their first amendment rights here, but not on multiple topics in the same discussion!
;-(
Dear Visvanath,
I disagree, this post and replies is not about developers. It is about community engagement with the forums playing a part in this. If you segregate developers off then you break the connection to the very users that justify their work and use what they create and maintain. Exclusion of labelled groups of society has never gone down well in history.
Kind regards,
Gareth
I'm not breaking anything, what I say is what Dominique started with,
There seems to be far fewer threads in some forums lately, for example in the "Quiz and question banks" forum. What might explain this decrease?
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=472158
is not the same as Tom's issue here, https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=472158#p1894538, a "hobby product" (his own words) having no chance of accepted in the Moodle eco system (in his belief).
@Tom, before you misunderstand, as the others have pointed out, there is an avenue, there must be. I'm not saying that your product is inferior, in fact I am in the Formulas front and reading Dominique's comments on your work - but as a general rule a renowed software package like Moodle needs some quality control, you'll understand.
I wasn't sure if Visvanath was responding to my post (I just tried viewing as a thread). But the support from non developers is vital, for short I will call them "normal people". People often assume that they cannot be of help if they are not developers where in my experience devs really, really need the normal people because those are our target audience.
Dear Marcus,
Re: " for short I will call them "normal people"".
I disagree, we are all "normal people" only with different skill sets. As soon as a demographic of society is labelled as 'not normal' (implied here) then that leads down a slippery slope. We need to break down the perceived barriers that are placed around the mystical skills and syntax that developers (like you and myself) employ. All we do is solve problems using variants of human language that get converted into a form that sets up switches that define a path for electrical (ignoring fibre optics here) force to traverse.
We all need each other in order to make a true success of what we are striving to achieve. The communication medium of the forums is one facet of facilitation of that goal.
Kind regards,
Gareth
Re: " for short I will call them "normal people"".
I disagree, we are all "normal people" only with different skill sets. As soon as a demographic of society is labelled as 'not normal' (implied here) then that leads down a slippery slope. We need to break down the perceived barriers that are placed around the mystical skills and syntax that developers (like you and myself) employ. All we do is solve problems using variants of human language that get converted into a form that sets up switches that define a path for electrical (ignoring fibre optics here) force to traverse.
We all need each other in order to make a true success of what we are striving to achieve. The communication medium of the forums is one facet of facilitation of that goal.
Kind regards,
Gareth
"I disagree, we are all "normal people" only with different skill sets."
The people who post on a forum like this have "a certain set of skills", If you restore the database backup now, that will be the end of it… but if you don’t, I will find your deprecated theme, and I will refactor it. .... < / humour>
The people who post on a forum like this have "a certain set of skills", If you restore the database backup now, that will be the end of it… but if you don’t, I will find your deprecated theme, and I will refactor it. .... < / humour>
Notice that "normal people" is a distinction, a positive one - there are so many abnormal creatures circling us!
Yeah, yeah, we feel great being politically correct. But that is a luxury. That is why we need some interjection not to tone hollow, wherever we don't have that luxury. Example: "All human are equal - just differently dispositioned (invent your filler)."
Hi Tom,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I’ve really enjoyed reading this discussion and the different perspectives being shared. If you didn't feel like part of the community before, I hope you do now In response to your question, "Do we want those hobbyists on Moodle? Can they co-exist with the 'serious' developers?", the answer is, absolutely.
I lead the team delivering the new Moodle Marketplace, which will be replacing the Plugins directory later this year. A big part of our work has been thinking about how we better support the full spectrum of plugin developers, from hobbyists to larger organisations. Our goal is to improve is visibility and sustainability. We want to make it easier for developers, whatever their scale, to showcase (and sell, if they choose) their work to a broad audience of Moodle users, and easier for users to find solutions that match their needs.
I’ll also reconfirm what Gareth already mentioned: there aren’t really two "tiers" of plugins in the directory today. Moodle has always welcomed contributions from anyone in the community, and that includes hobbyists and passion projects. At the same time, all plugins go through a review and approval process to ensure they meet quality and code standards, and this will continue with Moodle Marketplace.
At the moment, Marketplace is already accepting paid plugin submissions and will be accepting new free plugins, as well as migrating all plugins from the Plugins Directory, when we launch later this year. It’s a great way for anyone building Moodle-compatible plugins to share their work with the wider Moodle community.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I’ve really enjoyed reading this discussion and the different perspectives being shared. If you didn't feel like part of the community before, I hope you do now
I lead the team delivering the new Moodle Marketplace, which will be replacing the Plugins directory later this year. A big part of our work has been thinking about how we better support the full spectrum of plugin developers, from hobbyists to larger organisations. Our goal is to improve is visibility and sustainability. We want to make it easier for developers, whatever their scale, to showcase (and sell, if they choose) their work to a broad audience of Moodle users, and easier for users to find solutions that match their needs.
I’ll also reconfirm what Gareth already mentioned: there aren’t really two "tiers" of plugins in the directory today. Moodle has always welcomed contributions from anyone in the community, and that includes hobbyists and passion projects. At the same time, all plugins go through a review and approval process to ensure they meet quality and code standards, and this will continue with Moodle Marketplace.
At the moment, Marketplace is already accepting paid plugin submissions and will be accepting new free plugins, as well as migrating all plugins from the Plugins Directory, when we launch later this year. It’s a great way for anyone building Moodle-compatible plugins to share their work with the wider Moodle community.
I have read all the replies here with interest and didn't know which to reply to so thought I'd just reply to the "postman".
I have also noticed fewer posts and would posit the following as reasons:
1. Moodle is getting easier to use. This may sound difficult to understand considering that it is becoming more complex in what it can do, but the number of tutorials (Thank you so much Mary and all!), the quality of the docs (incredible efforts by so many - thank you) and the tours that are available have all helped make things easier for the user and the community.
2. AI is a fall back. I have used it of late for a few moodle-related issues - the instant replies are brilliant. But it is getting its information from the forums and the docs so the quality there is obviously impressive which results in the impressive output of AI. Easy questions get replies from AI. I could be wrong but compared to over 10 years ago, the types of questions in the forums nowadays seem far more "unique" ie specific to individual users. Hence people are not requiring their use as much.
and finally 3. Moodle is now much bigger and more entrenched so people have their own teams and "go-to" people that can answer the questions that are being asked. It is my understanding that Moodle is continuing to expand in being used around the world so it is not as though there are less users. It is just that they have help from other avenues. That is a little sad as they may never get to experience the incredible community that exists here in these forums. I have, over the years, truly appreciated everyone's assistance and collegiality. Long may the community continue, but yes, it needs to be promoted and shared to ensure that happens.
An extra couple of cents to this very interesting discussion.
I have also noticed fewer posts and would posit the following as reasons:
1. Moodle is getting easier to use. This may sound difficult to understand considering that it is becoming more complex in what it can do, but the number of tutorials (Thank you so much Mary and all!), the quality of the docs (incredible efforts by so many - thank you) and the tours that are available have all helped make things easier for the user and the community.
2. AI is a fall back. I have used it of late for a few moodle-related issues - the instant replies are brilliant. But it is getting its information from the forums and the docs so the quality there is obviously impressive which results in the impressive output of AI. Easy questions get replies from AI. I could be wrong but compared to over 10 years ago, the types of questions in the forums nowadays seem far more "unique" ie specific to individual users. Hence people are not requiring their use as much.
and finally 3. Moodle is now much bigger and more entrenched so people have their own teams and "go-to" people that can answer the questions that are being asked. It is my understanding that Moodle is continuing to expand in being used around the world so it is not as though there are less users. It is just that they have help from other avenues. That is a little sad as they may never get to experience the incredible community that exists here in these forums. I have, over the years, truly appreciated everyone's assistance and collegiality. Long may the community continue, but yes, it needs to be promoted and shared to ensure that happens.
An extra couple of cents to this very interesting discussion.
To Eric and all
Eric wrote:
>3. Moodle is now much bigger and more entrenched so people have their own teams and "go-to" people that can answer the questions that are being asked. It is my understanding that Moodle is continuing to expand in being used around the world so it is not as though there are less users. It is just that they have help from other avenues.
>3. Moodle is now much bigger and more entrenched so people have their own teams and "go-to" people that can answer the questions that are being asked. It is my understanding that Moodle is continuing to expand in being used around the world so it is not as though there are less users. It is just that they have help from other avenues.
I think, I hope, that answers a concern I had for years now, long before AI: Why the traffic in Deutsches Moodle is minimal. I know, there are a handful of diehard, some legendary helpers there. But if the help requests and other interactions dry out, nothing much they can do.
I entered the Moodle community through the German forum. The English forums were the source for more technical questions. It has completely changed. Now you mention, I have seen more than one thriving German speaking communities.
> That is a little sad as they may never get to experience the incredible community that exists here in these forums.
I think the same. But this development must have a history. I believe our community managers are aware and have studied/investigated Why.
Apart from the possible factors mentioned I am wondering whether the very recent, this Winter, waves of spam (here and here), their counter measures (here and here), crawlers entering the scene and the fightback (here) not to mention AI sucking content, not one, not two, hoards of them fighting against each other,.. That breaking things (here). In short, a war zone. I fear, moodle.org is on its way to be a no-man, worst no-woman, zone!
Som svar til Visvanath Ratnaweera
Decrease in activity on some forums
Very sad if so, Visvanath. I am not sure the "waves of spam" were any bigger than usual; it might just have been the new team getting used to spam moderation. But it is possible the counter measures are putting genuine posters off - I dont' know how to make that better personally, although more input from HQ team members might be motivating. I suspect the point about people going to AI first and also using other sites/social media to find answers might be the main issue here.
Som svar til Mary Cooch (personal account)
Decrease in activity on some forums
av Shirley Gregorczyk -
Truthfully, I started using Google search to find forum posts, because the internal forum search is terrible.
Som svar til Mary Cooch (personal account)
Decrease in activity on some forums
av Visvanath Ratnaweera -
What sad? Deflate the tires, that'll deter the joyriders!
Or, when poison and anti-poison get mixed up, what do you have?
Som svar til Mary Cooch (personal account)
Decrease in activity on some forums
av Visvanath Ratnaweera -
And here is the root cause of the "waves of spam", they reveberate! https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=473436#p1896832