handyfloss

Another reason to love FLOSS: developers are close to the users, and they LISTEN.

I recently started using the Sociable WordPress plugin for this blog. This wonderful plugin by Joost de Valk, lets you put some links to social bookmarking/news/recommendation sites on the web at the bottom of each post, so a reader can send your post to such a site with a single click.

There are many WP plugins that do this, but I liked the looks of Joost’s, and the pleasant way of managing it. I chose Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, Technorati and Slashdot, but I felt that at least two sites that I liked were missing from the available sites list: Menéame and Barrapunto.

So I boldly decided to contact the developer, Joost de Valk, and ask for them:

Hi Joost,

I have just discovered your “Sociable” WordPress plugin, and I like it a lot.

However, there is always room for improvement, and as such I would like to suggest you to add links to the following sites:

Menéame (http://meneame.net/)
Barrapunto (http://barrapunto.com/)

Both are Spanish “versions” of popular sites: Digg and Slashdot, respectively.

I mainly write in English, but I think that blogs with a Spanish audience could benefit a lot from these links.

Now I realize I even forgot to say “thanks in advance” or anything… I was a bit unpolite, I fear. Anyway, his answer came a couple of days later:

I’ll add them in the next version, coming out… tonight I guess :)

Can I trust upon you to promote it a bit there? :)

Cheers,
Joost

It is actually true that a new version of Sociable has been released, and it includes Menéame and Barrapunto as available sites. So here it goes your promotion, Joost ;^)

Isn’t it great when people collaborate and are generally nice to each other? Isn’t everyone tired of a society where people don’t do anything unless they get money or power in return?

Thanks Joost and other bona fide developers for your great work.