The following article may contain indirect reference(s) to people who are not members of JAFFAAS and, while we believe that people should be able to engage in respectful, constructive, open and frank discussion and that different opinions may be more difficult for some people to tolerate than for others, some people may take personal offence.  We take this opportunity to apologise to any individual of the Joomla! community who takes exception to these principles and, in particular, to moderators of the Joomla! Forum™ for any offence caused.

We can never understand other people’s motives, nor their furniture.Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1963

I can think of a dozen or more sound reasons for keeping software up-to-date and, further, why I would recommend that other people should not use outdated or unsupported software.  However this article is not about my personal preferences; this article is about how we should recognise that everyone’s different and to respect people who have different needs or different views about such matters.  In fact, while I can think of good reasons for not using outdated or unsupported software there is one reason that negates all the others:  if a business is thriving on the use of outmoded technology, if there’s a continuing demand for it, then the business comes ahead of anyone else’s opinion.

Inasmuch as the Joomla! forum is a resource for people to ask questions and seek help, I’ve often written that there’s only one expert in the “room” at any given time.  That expert is not me nor is it someone who’s written tens of thousands of words elsewhere.  The true expert is the person who asks the question—even if they may not know the technical terms or how best to articulate that question.  Our job should only be to facilitate in ways that relate to the questioner’s needs.  The Joomla! forum should welcome people, irrespective of their technical proficiency, and respect their questionsRespect, of course, is a two-way street.  People who abuse the forum to shamelessly promote themselves, products, services or violate the forum rules—people who show no respect to others who rely upon the forum for help—of course, deserve only to be shown the exit door.  Our task is not to judge other people because of the choices they’ve made no matter what personal feelings we have.

Before continuing further, I have to admit that I haven’t always felt as I do now; I confess that I have criticised—some people may claim that I’ve judged—others for their choices.  I confess that I have been among the chorus of opinionated “experts” who’ve condemned people who come to the Joomla! forum seeking help with obsolete software and told them to update—as if people were clueless, in the first place, about the need to update in any case.  I even went as far as to request the abolition of J! 1.x-related forum categoriessee https://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=960705.  I admit I was wrong.  I can’t retract what I have written in the past but, as poor an apology as this may be written here in a microcosm on the internet, I’m genuinely sorry.