People are entitled to their opinions. No matter how incorrect you may think they are they have a right to think that way and you have a right to disagree. There’s absolutely no need to beat each other to death.

I’m with Keith, and I was invited under essentially the same premise. I was never told of the “rules” and my first inclination that I wasn’t welcome or invited was when I got tossed.

Let’s all step back and breathe a bit, ok?

Brandon, I’m sorry that you got your feelings hurt. I really am. I’m glad you’re in the community, and I value you as a member. But honestly, I also value Derick as a member, and I think we should all get over ourselves and move on. Shit happens every day that I don’t like or agree with. It would be ludicrous of me to assume that everything should happen the way I want it to and people should do what I want them to do.

@Pierre: Why is creating a backchannel to reduce noise stupid? There are approximately 150 people in #phpc at any given moment. So every topic I want to talk about with people I’m close to should be open for everyone to see? And why would I presume the members of #phpc would be interested in hearing about my kids or my dog or any other trivial thing I feel like bringing up?

Also, for example, we create channels for conferences all the time… so the rest of the world doesn’t have to listen to what’s going on there if they don’t want to. Hence, noise reduction.

When I found backchannel last year, I was told it was like a bunch of people sitting around at the bar. From being at tek a few weeks back, I understood this to mean that anyone can drift in or out and the only reason someone gets kicked out is if they’re a total ass.

Last week, I found out it was completely different… when someone started listing off the people they didn’t invite and proposed password protecting the channel and changing the password regularly.

I left at that point as opposed to be a part of that.

Which saddens me in some parts since not everybody in that channel is on the community channel, so there is no way to get to know them better (To name an example: Elizabeth M Smith, since she replied here also)

You do however have some facts mixed up. Like Elizabeth said, you did not got kicked out of a official community channel. Even though all the ‘big names’ are in that channel (looks can be deceiving).

I hope to see you, and others, around on #phpc :-)

With this blog post you just come off as a spoiled child who’s used to getting his way. It smells a bit of an attempted reputation attack on Derick – I’m sure it’s not intentional, but it comes off as that.

All these community “leaders” creating backchannels/meetings/groups, positioning themselves as whatever they dream about is either ridiculous or somehow pathetic.

Private is fine. But in a group that large it’s not possible to keep a secret, and we saw the results. I think in the end people do get upset when they think they’re joining a group of friends and suddenly find out that those “friends” don’t think them good enough.

that’s IRC – there are “backchannels”, channels where friends just want to hang out… and people do get offended if you start throwing out their channel name to everyone and have the perfect right to kick you out – just as you have the right to go start your own little hang out and invite your friends in

Because at the end the “official” community channel there is #phpc specifically for the PHP community – and getting upset over being kicked out of there summarily would be something to have a fit about – but not this

Thanks,
Elizabeth