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Robert Castelo wrote:
<blockquote
cite="midcb08f0aba5baf93f2a20c5115406137d@cortextcommunications.com"
type="cite">On 7 Jan 2006, at 15:07, Charlie Lowe wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">some do not see the value of having these
"hitchhikers" (implying, of course, that they are parasites)
<br>
</blockquote>
Not at all, I wrote that they are 'not needed' - that doesn't mean they
aren't welcome, or that their company isn't valued, just that if they
don't contribute anything they will have zero effect on the journey the
rest of the participating Drupal community is taking.
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
This is an assertion that I do not believe is true. Now I realize that
what I'm saying is heresy to developers, but really, just as an author
benefits from readership, the Drupal development community benefits
from users. This development does NOT happen in a vacuum. For example,
would we even have a trackback module if trackbacks not only weren't
thought up and implemented elsewhere but also if the idea hadn't caught
on with users?<br>
<br>
In other words, how many "itches" just happen spontaneously, and how
many are inspired by ideas elsewhere, or even by a stray remark or idle
musing here in the forums?<br>
<br>
I daresay that if Drupal were being used only by the 150 or so
contributors, it would not be what it is today. And many of those
contributors would not even be here because they would never have been
drawn to an obscure CMS with no user base.<br>
<br>
I think that making the claim that the Drupal user base has "zero
effect" on Drupal development comes from not seeing the big picture
here. This community would benefit greatly if, in addition to the
developer-focused discussion and activity and functionality, we could
make welcome and help facilitate user-centric and site-admin-centric
discussions of what Drupal could be. Who knows how many itches arising
from talk about what's possible, what's desired, what's needed would
end up being scratched by developers who just happen to like idea X, Y
or Z? (For anyone interested, I wrote more about this topic <a
href="http://www.pingv.com/blog/laura/200601/on-itch-scratching-hitchhikers-and-growing-within-the-interactive-ecosystem">here</a>.)<br>
<br>
What I don't like about "hitchhiker" is that it gives the idea that
Drupal users are flakes, freeloaders, Bohemians who have no interest in
being a part of a community, let alone "the establishment," and that I
believe is off-putting to a large percentage of users out there who are
just as serious, just as professional, just as competent in their
fields as the Drupal code developers are in their own. In fact, there's
an entire science to interactive development that is not about code
aesthetics but rather about user experience, data chunking, data
matrices and so on -- things that everyone would benefit from, if only
they were aware of them.<br>
<br>
I strongly feel that we all would be better served by a more proactive
approach. We would all benefit from more user participation, more
discussion of user experience, and more discussion of application in
the real world -- discussion that would nourish all areas of
development.<br>
<br>
Laura<br>
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