Story: the community
This page is for journalists who cover the people side of open source. The practical guide for reporting on people is Writing about the community; this page gives the story angle and the facts.
Contents
The story in one paragraph
Exponential's community is older than its name. eZpedia, "The free eZ Publish encyclopedia that anyone can edit", has run since 2006; the forums at share.exponential.earth and the Telegram chat carry today's questions; Discord and Slack are listed on the project website; and the GitHub trackers take bugs and ideas (Community places). Before 2016, 194 different commit authors appear in the history; since December 2023 pull requests have come from 7x and from other companies and developers, and "Every pull request is merged" (How the project grows). The README: "The Exponential Project and the Exponential Foundation support the open source community directly ... and put the support needs of community users first."
Facts you can print
| Fact | Source |
|---|---|
| eZpedia since 2006, under the GNU FDL | The community |
| Forums, Telegram, Discord, Slack, trackers | Official channels and social accounts |
| 194 commit authors before 2016 | Contributors and friends of the project |
| administration translations (the current totals are at the top of the languages page) | Languages in Exponential |
| Every pull request is merged | Story: every pull request is merged |
What not to claim
| Do not say | Say instead |
|---|---|
| "A community of thousands" | Not counted (What the sources do not say) |
| "Annual conference" | No events are documented |
| "The official ambassador program" | None is documented |
Angles and headline ideas
- "A wiki that outlived its software's original name."
- "Translators who brought a CMS to right-to-left languages."
Related pages
- Writing about the community
- Advocates: start here
- Story: funding and sponsors
- Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.
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