Question A WYSIWYG-style editor for Kunena

Over the past 4 years of Kunena there has been debate and criticism of the Kunena project because the forum lacks a true WYSIWYG-style editor. Many people have stated, without reservation, that Kunena is the best forum component for Joomla but the absence of a WYSIWYG-style editor makes it totally impractical or unsuitable for their purposes. Rather than continue the debate about whether BBcode-style forums are impractical or unusable or whether WYSIWYG-style editors are the usual means of infiltration of people's websites by cyber-terrorists, we'd like to try to get this issue out of the quagmire and put the matter firmly on the development agenda.

Taking on a development activity like this is not cheap. The initial estimate of work is 40 hours to design, code, build and test a WYSIWYG editor. At roughly $80 per hour, this is $3,200 of development effort. We are therefore proposing the creation of an investment fund to finance the development and adminstration costs and, at this time, we are looking for a broad indication of support for the idea.

The general idea is that people will purchase shares in the fund at a cost of $40 per share (100 shares will be offered). The actual details of the share offer will be covered by a more detailed prospectus. Our question at this time is would you be willing to contribute $40 to help fund this activity: yes or no?

The results of this survey will not, in any way, influence our decision to go ahead or cancel the idea of a WYSIWYG-style editor for Kunena.

I'm going to abstain from vote ONLY because I know I can't afford the $ right now. But if I had it it would be a yes.

Hello,

as written often before a premium-/supporter-membership for Kunena would be good. Yearly 48 $ (=4$/month) for premium plugins like wysiwyg-editor, smart search and so on would be ok.

It also helps that the money don't comes only one time, just every year.
Think on updates and so on...

I'll donate at minimum 100 € for a wysiwyg-editor...

@N6REJ: Thanks for the feedback anyway. I should add that it's our proposal that investors in the fund will obtain a copy of this software at no additional cost aside from the money they invest in the fund. We also expect that those people who do not have the money now (to invest in the fund) will be able to buy the product later; the purchase price for this product will be higher than the cost of purchasing a share in the investment fund. If you don't have the money now, that's OK but the cost will be higher later.

Sozzled, and the rest of the development team. I do hope you thought VERY carefully before going down this voting route. From a marketing perspective (a field I've worked in for many years) its a huge risk to your credibility. Professionally, I would never have recommended it.

I've voted against this proposal, not only because I think it's a totally unnecessary, in fact likely to be downright annoying feature, but mostly because I worry about the direction it could take Kunena. I see two main issues:

1 - giving unwarranted credence to a vocal minority. I say minority regardless of the outcome of this vote simply because it will not (can not) reflect the true opinions of your entire user base. I'm sure you know as well as I do there are thousands of people who have downloaded Kunena, installed it without trouble, used it without issues, and are happy with its performance and feature set. They are your "un-complaining customers". The most important (and largest) group you have. The never visit this site, so will never vote for this proposal. I hope you are going to consider their "vote" in this poll - count 20,000 against!

2 - the concept of allowing money to direct the efforts of volunteer developers is a total anathema. Asking for donations is OK, but this is totally different. I note in another thread on this topic the statement:

On the other side I want to see something like a project schedule or being able to influence the direction of development a little bit if I support a project.

That's not an unreasonable thing to say from someone considering investing in your business. You must expect a lot more of it if you take this path. No shareholder would ever expect less, and however you dress it, that's what you are inviting. Do the developers of Kunena really want the use of their leisure time dictated to them in this way? The thought makes me shudder.

If you believe you have a product that you want to take into a commercial market, then do that. Start a proper business, give up your day jobs, get some real investment, and do it right. But don't call the product open-source or free any longer, and expect your target market to be a very different set of people.

I thought about that... If someone can send me an legal invoice I'll pay 10% (320,- $) for that...

Kunena could use a more modern editor, I can only agree with that. But why would you develop a new one for thousands of dollars, when you can simply implement a TinyMCE or any other Joomla editor? I never understood this developer behaviour. Kunena is a Joomla extension, and so, it can use the features of Joomla. For example: editor, captcha, category management, user management. Instead, the developer team treats it like a CMS completely different from Joomla, like you had to develop everything yourself. This is *** coarse language removed by moderator ***

Balázs: If you want to understand the background to this topic (and the reasons in the past why there has been no WYWSIWG-style editor) you should read [Merged topic] WYSIWYG editor for Kunena: How to allow HTML tags?

Please read the terms of use regarding the use of coarse language on the forum. Coarse language is not acceptable on this forum.

This poll is to gauge public opinion on an idea that we have to help pay for the development of a WYSIWYG-style editor for Kunena. The results of the poll will not determine whether the idea will go ahead or not go ahead. The poll is merely to indicate popular support for, and the community's willingness to assist the project. Let's try to keep that in mind.

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I agree with most of what kiwi3685 wrote. These are very good points.

I agree that there is probably only a minority of users who want a WYSIWYG-style editor for Kunena and, for that highly vocal minority (just see the comments made on the JED for an indication of what I'm talking about), we're trying to address these concerns in a very practical way.

Even if a WYSIWYG-style editor was available for Kunena - and if it addresses the many concerns raised in our discussions on the subject over the past 3½ years - it's not something that everyone wants or needs. For those who want this (and who say they need it) we want to try to address this matter in a very real and practical way. The idea that we have in mind (to raise funds to pay for the development of a WYSIWYG-style editor) is a practical step to achieve this.

I do not know how successful this idea will be. I do not know if we will be able to obtain the necessary funding to get this idea onto the development agenda but, if we don't make a start somewhere, nothing else will happen except that people will continue to complain or criticise the project for doing nothing. Let's return to the matter of this poll. Let's see an indication of what support there is within the community to help get this idea to happen. The true and only reliable measure of support for developing this feature occurs when we commence our investment fund-raising campaign in earnest. All of the activities (including setting up and managing an investment fund) take time and need to be done properly.

I hope this helps people understand the purpose of the poll and our intentions in this matter. Thank you.

This poll has now closed and, with it, this topic is now locked.

The results of the poll were evenly-balanced. Of the 10 votes received, 5 people said they would help finance the development of a WYSIWYG-style editor for Kunena and 5 people said that they would not help finance the development of a WYSIWYG-style editor for Kunena.