On Jul 31, 2007, at 5:39 PM, Angela Byron wrote:
Yes, that was very poorly worded, and you have my full apologies.
Fully accepted, without hard feelings.
But yes, I do believe that there is more to creating change than simply starting a new channel and going elsewhere. The only way #drupal will become a useful place for new users is if people start hanging out there and making it so. Abandoning it, as many have done, has only made things remarkably worse.
I won't repeat myself about how difficult it has been and continues to be to make logical arguments about this, nor will I repeat those logical arguments. All that I'll add is that I didn't "just leave" and never tried to make these arguments in the past. I tried many times, and always ran into the same brick wall we're hitting now. If #drupal is in bad shape now, that's squarely a result of the people who refuse to look reality in the face and acknowledge that new people *will* go there to ask support questions. I can't change the climate in there just by trying to be nice and answer, if the rest of the room thinks it's the development channel and shoos people away to #drupal-support. Either: 1) #drupal-support should be closed and #drupal repurposed to be the support room. 2) #drupal should be a level of indirection (as per my original email in this thread). 3) #drupal can remain in whatever weird, intermediary state it's in now. The choice is squarely in the hands of those who continue to brush off all attempts at logic and any desire for improvement. Those of us "boat rockers" who embrace reality would be happy to join #drupal again to provide support if it was clearly repurposed to be the support room, whenever we had time or inclination to provide IRC support. I have spent time in #drupal-support, you know. Cheers, -Derek p.s. Novice developers are more than welcome to lurk in #drupal-dev or ask their novice development questions. Using the bot to send novice developers to the right page on api.drupal.org is vastly more enjoyable and productive than slapping newcomers with "support?!" rage every time they ask a support question in an ambiguously-named channel.