#drupal / #drupal-dev split considered harmful
A couple weeks ago, a few developers started going into #drupal-dev instead of #drupal and started a campaign to get people to split off. I guess the reasoning for this was because they disagreed with newbies who didn't read the topic getting 'support?' in their face when they join our "official" channel. I personally think it is a feature, and not a bug, that our main channel is contribution-focused rather than support-focused, but that is largely irrelevant to the topic at hand. The problem is that the people who started this 'fork' have not been present in #drupal, actively taking part in support requests from newbies, thus changing the 'mood' of the channel by their own words in actions. Instead, the main channel's merely been abandoned by several very prominent contributors, a large portion of the development community doesn't even realize there's a separate channel, development discussion in general is now splintered between the channels, and newbies are still getting 'support?' in #drupal. The climate in the 'official' channel right now is more that of a ghost town of join/part messages, except for random musings about the infrastructure and, of course, 'support?'. This gives the exact opposite impression to new Drupal users than the channel did before the split -- a vibrant community of developers sharing issues or patches to review, talking about new modules they're developing, etc. So please, #drupal-dev goers, either finish what you started by actively working in #drupal to make it more newbie-friendly, or abandon the experiment. So far, this feels like a net loss for the community. -Angie
+1 Courtesy: Useless replies Dept. On 7/31/07, Angela Byron <drupal-devel@webchick.net> wrote:
A couple weeks ago, a few developers started going into #drupal-dev instead of #drupal and started a campaign to get people to split off. I guess the reasoning for this was because they disagreed with newbies who didn't read the topic getting 'support?' in their face when they join our "official" channel. I personally think it is a feature, and not a bug, that our main channel is contribution-focused rather than support-focused, but that is largely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
The problem is that the people who started this 'fork' have not been present in #drupal, actively taking part in support requests from newbies, thus changing the 'mood' of the channel by their own words in actions. Instead, the main channel's merely been abandoned by several very prominent contributors, a large portion of the development community doesn't even realize there's a separate channel, development discussion in general is now splintered between the channels, and newbies are still getting 'support?' in #drupal.
The climate in the 'official' channel right now is more that of a ghost town of join/part messages, except for random musings about the infrastructure and, of course, 'support?'. This gives the exact opposite impression to new Drupal users than the channel did before the split -- a vibrant community of developers sharing issues or patches to review, talking about new modules they're developing, etc.
So please, #drupal-dev goers, either finish what you started by actively working in #drupal to make it more newbie-friendly, or abandon the experiment. So far, this feels like a net loss for the community.
-Angie
-- Robin Monks @ www.civicspacelabs.org @ www.gmking.org @ www.multimediachurches.org Fax: (419) 791-8076 "Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might." ~ Ephesians 6:10
Angela Byron wrote:
So please, #drupal-dev goers, either finish what you started by actively working in #drupal to make it more newbie-friendly, or abandon the experiment. So far, this feels like a net loss for the community.
This is a lovely thought; however, resistance to the idea of #drupal-dev makes it fairly difficult to actually change #drupal. The fact that various people are refusing to set foot in #drupal-dev shows me that any attempt to change #drupal is going to be met with resistance, as it has in the past. So sure, you can ask us to change #drupal, but we haven't the power. Those of us who moved to #drupal-dev have done what we have the power to do. The -dev channel has been more focused and more useful since we moved there; people who were avoiding #drupal because it had become too big/loud/difficult to follow are willing to hang out in -dev again. I'll be happy to spend time in #drupal again and help transform it, but I don't see how that can happen until the people who object to #drupal-dev's existence cease their objections. In general, the sign (to me) that such a thing has happened is when the more vocal opponents are willing to go into the channel. I've been avoiding talking about this in public. The debate itself makes me angry; sometimes unreasonably so. Case in point: I went off on sepeck, undeservedly, the other night, for being somewhat snide about the channel. And people such as killes and Steven who've been around a LOT longer than I have are on the list of people who object to #drupal-dev. If transforming #drupal means fighting them, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to use #drupal-dev as a focused room for development, instead, for as long as there are people willing to go there. I left #drupal as a way of drawing people over to the -dev channel. At this point, the only people who aren't there are 1) people who don't know about it, and 2) people who refuse to acknowledge it. The only way to fix 1) is to make a lot of noise about it. I've tried to avoid doing that. The way to fix 2) probably includes a long fight about justifications. I'm not interested in a fight. I'm interested in an environment where I can get things done. I wrote about my objections to the atmosphere in #drupal as my seventh blog post on Angry Donuts: http://www.angrydonuts.com/drupal_and_user_experience -- in the year and a half that has passed since I wrote that post, my basic opinion has not changed. The arguments against -dev have not swayed me. The only reason -dev didn't exist earlier is that it takes a group of people to make the transition at once. We cannot transform #drupal over the objections of the people who control #drupal. We can make #drupal-dev into the channel we want it to be; the people who control #drupal can decide to change it, or decide not to, or they can simply not decide and allow blame to shift to those who choose to hang out in #drupal-dev rather than #drupal.
Well a large part of my resistance is simply that this wasn't discussed at all in the community. IF this is a direction that we are moving in then I think it needs discussion and letting people know about it. Of course it won't change if people don't even know about it. It has the *feeling* of being an exclusive "in the club" thing. Of course, publicizing it means that newbies will just start to come there to get their questions answered, especially if no one is helping them in #drupal. I'm still of the thought that having a separate dev channel is unnecessary. I understand that having a "quiet" place that only "devs" know about can be a comfortable place to go, but Drupal is a community as much as it is a group of coders. I feel like this should be a community decision and if it is decided as such, then the community can help with the transition rather than just mysteriously splitting. As it stands now I feel like this is causing way more damage than good. - Addi On Jul 31, 2007, at 6:51 PM, Earl Miles wrote:
Angela Byron wrote:
So please, #drupal-dev goers, either finish what you started by actively working in #drupal to make it more newbie-friendly, or abandon the experiment. So far, this feels like a net loss for the community.
This is a lovely thought; however, resistance to the idea of #drupal-dev makes it fairly difficult to actually change #drupal. The fact that various people are refusing to set foot in #drupal- dev shows me that any attempt to change #drupal is going to be met with resistance, as it has in the past.
So sure, you can ask us to change #drupal, but we haven't the power. Those of us who moved to #drupal-dev have done what we have the power to do. The -dev channel has been more focused and more useful since we moved there; people who were avoiding #drupal because it had become too big/loud/difficult to follow are willing to hang out in -dev again.
I'll be happy to spend time in #drupal again and help transform it, but I don't see how that can happen until the people who object to #drupal-dev's existence cease their objections. In general, the sign (to me) that such a thing has happened is when the more vocal opponents are willing to go into the channel.
I've been avoiding talking about this in public. The debate itself makes me angry; sometimes unreasonably so. Case in point: I went off on sepeck, undeservedly, the other night, for being somewhat snide about the channel. And people such as killes and Steven who've been around a LOT longer than I have are on the list of people who object to #drupal-dev. If transforming #drupal means fighting them, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to use #drupal- dev as a focused room for development, instead, for as long as there are people willing to go there.
I left #drupal as a way of drawing people over to the -dev channel. At this point, the only people who aren't there are 1) people who don't know about it, and 2) people who refuse to acknowledge it. The only way to fix 1) is to make a lot of noise about it. I've tried to avoid doing that. The way to fix 2) probably includes a long fight about justifications. I'm not interested in a fight. I'm interested in an environment where I can get things done.
I wrote about my objections to the atmosphere in #drupal as my seventh blog post on Angry Donuts: http://www.angrydonuts.com/ drupal_and_user_experience -- in the year and a half that has passed since I wrote that post, my basic opinion has not changed. The arguments against -dev have not swayed me. The only reason -dev didn't exist earlier is that it takes a group of people to make the transition at once.
We cannot transform #drupal over the objections of the people who control #drupal. We can make #drupal-dev into the channel we want it to be; the people who control #drupal can decide to change it, or decide not to, or they can simply not decide and allow blame to shift to those who choose to hang out in #drupal-dev rather than #drupal.
Addison Berry wrote:
Well a large part of my resistance is simply that this wasn't discussed at all in the community. IF this is a direction that we are moving in then I think it needs discussion and letting people know about it. Of course it won't change if people don't even know about it. It has the *feeling* of being an exclusive "in the club" thing. Of course, publicizing it means that newbies will just start to come there to get their questions answered, especially if no one is helping them in #drupal.
If it feels like it's meant to be exclusive, it's no more exclusive than #drupal ever was. It's simply better labelled. There has never been any intention of excluding people; instead the intention has been clarity of labelling. If you've felt that, somehow, you or other people you know are being intentionally excluded, that is a completely unintentional slight. For those who I know knew about the channel and haven't come over, I've generally assumed any of those people were in the group who thinks #drupal-dev is a bad idea. If what I've already said hasn't changed their minds, it's not going to.
On 7/31/07, Angela Byron <drupal-devel@webchick.net> wrote:
A couple weeks ago, a few developers started going into #drupal-dev instead of #drupal and started a campaign to get people to split off. I guess the reasoning for this was because they disagreed with newbies who didn't read the topic getting 'support?' in their face when they join our "official" channel. I personally think it is a feature, and not a bug, that our main channel is contribution-focused rather than support-focused, but that is largely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
The problem is that the people who started this 'fork' have not been present in #drupal, actively taking part in support requests from newbies, thus changing the 'mood' of the channel by their own words in actions. Instead, the main channel's merely been abandoned by several very prominent contributors, a large portion of the development community doesn't even realize there's a separate channel, development discussion in general is now splintered between the channels, and newbies are still getting 'support?' in #drupal.
The climate in the 'official' channel right now is more that of a ghost town of join/part messages, except for random musings about the infrastructure and, of course, 'support?'. This gives the exact opposite impression to new Drupal users than the channel did before the split -- a vibrant community of developers sharing issues or patches to review, talking about new modules they're developing, etc.
So please, #drupal-dev goers, either finish what you started by actively working in #drupal to make it more newbie-friendly, or abandon the experiment. So far, this feels like a net loss for the community.
-Angie
Seems the main issue is that this "fork" was not discussed widely enough in the community. How about repurposing or a charter change of #drupal vs. #drupal-dev? #drupal-dev would be for purely development talk, and #drupal for everything drupal (except support), including infrastructure, ...etc. How about getting a discussion going this time on what to do? -- 2bits.com http://2bits.com Drupal development, customization and consulting.
On 7/31/07, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb@2bits.com> wrote:
Seems the main issue is that this "fork" was not discussed widely enough in the community.
How about repurposing or a charter change of #drupal vs. #drupal-dev?
#drupal-dev would be for purely development talk, and #drupal for everything drupal (except support), including infrastructure, ...etc.
I think that's pretty much what we've got right now. Nothing but tumble weeds and "support?" in #drupal with all the dev talk happening in #drupal-dev. I don't think anyone's happy with that. I'm all for putting support where 90% of people will look first: #drupal.
A couple weeks ago, a few developers started going into #drupal-dev instead of #drupal and started a campaign to get people to split off. I guess the reasoning for this was because they disagreed with newbies who didn't read the topic getting 'support?' in their face when they join our "official" channel. I personally think it is a feature, and not a bug, that our main channel is contribution-focused rather than support-focused, but that is largely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Forgive me for not being as up on my #drupal-whatsnext politics as perhaps I should be. What is being proposed, or has been done, why, and why is it good/bad for the project? As I understood it was: #drupal - development focused #drupal-support - support focused - for newbies #drupal-dojo - training, perhaps a good middle ground. #drupal-theming, ecommerce, consulting et. al. as desired. What I see now: #drupal-dev - development? is this accurate #drupal - I don't know anymore #drupal-dojo - Seems to not have an identity crisis #drupal-support - also is pretty clear. What is #drupal to be if we split of dev talk? -samtresler
As I understood it was:
#drupal - development focused #drupal-support - support focused - for newbies
The problem is that #drupal is the first place newbies will think of to get support. Once they are there, they are greeted with the "support?" reply telling them to go to #drupal-support. This can be offputting and make people feel unwelcome. They ask the first question and get a reply that amounts to : "we don't serve your type here, buzz off!" (plagiarised from Esmerel) So, I don't see why charters can change, with development in #drupal-dev (and only development), then #drupal become community focused, has support, infra discussions, and everything else that is not development.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Khalid Baheyeldin schrieb:
As I understood it was:
#drupal - development focused #drupal-support - support focused - for newbies
The problem is that #drupal is the first place newbies will think of to get support. Once they are there, they are greeted with the "support?" reply telling them to go to #drupal-support.
No, they actually get a message when they join and there is a topic to look at.
This can be offputting and make people feel unwelcome. They ask the first question and get a reply that amounts to : "we don't serve your type here, buzz off!" (plagiarised from Esmerel)
"You didn't read the topic or pay attention to the join message, buzz off" is more accurate.
So, I don't see why charters can change, with development in #drupal-dev (and only development), then #drupal become community focused, has support, infra discussions, and everything else that is not development.
I am not going to agree to this. Cheers, Gerhard -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFGr8ckfg6TFvELooQRAlL9AJ43dG5LN1hHHFUhI9y4ZXh62CBBxACfQ2ai YL6C2/bWNr3a0pZxHOIv5jk= =Dte3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Gerhard Killesreiter schrieb:
Khalid Baheyeldin schrieb:
As I understood it was:
#drupal - development focused #drupal-support - support focused - for newbies
The problem is that #drupal is the first place newbies will think of to get support. Once they are there, they are greeted with the "support?" reply telling them to go to #drupal-support.
No, they actually get a message when they join and there is a topic to look at.
This can be offputting and make people feel unwelcome. They ask the first question and get a reply that amounts to : "we don't serve your type here, buzz off!" (plagiarised from Esmerel)
"You didn't read the topic or pay attention to the join message, buzz off" is more accurate.
So, I don't see why charters can change, with development in #drupal-dev (and only development), then #drupal become community focused, has support, infra discussions, and everything else that is not development.
I am not going to agree to this.
Let me re-phrase that: I am not going to give up #drupal to the people who can't properly use IRC anyway. Cheers, Gerhard -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFGr8jTfg6TFvELooQRAvCaAJwJOyfXiahyb2gQWkw7h4Oo2FBsCQCgqBKz +E48vwwUQ4hKSe3r+MsqeS4= =Sx3G -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Killes, don't you see that it's this horrible condescending attitude that is the whole problem? Do you not *want* newbies? Are you allergic? New folks are often in a rush to get their first project out the door. It's understandable. That's why they picked a CMS and didn't sit down to write an application. So they're in a hurry, glance at IRC channels, and find one that looks like it will help. *This will continue to happen no matter what the channel charters are* So, my vote is, let's work with it instead of fighting it all the time. Mr. Killesreiter we're having fun while the tumbleweeds blow in #drupal. Join us! It's your destiny ;-) --fletch On 7/31/07, Gerhard Killesreiter <gerhard@killesreiter.de> wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Khalid Baheyeldin schrieb:
As I understood it was:
#drupal - development focused #drupal-support - support focused - for newbies
The problem is that #drupal is the first place newbies will think of to get support. Once they are there, they are greeted with the "support?" reply telling them to go to #drupal-support.
No, they actually get a message when they join and there is a topic to look at.
This can be offputting and make people feel unwelcome. They ask the first question and get a reply that amounts to : "we don't serve your type here, buzz off!" (plagiarised from Esmerel)
"You didn't read the topic or pay attention to the join message, buzz off" is more accurate.
So, I don't see why charters can change, with development in #drupal-dev (and only development), then #drupal become community focused, has support, infra discussions, and everything else that is not development.
I am not going to agree to this.
Cheers, Gerhard -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Dave Fletcher schrieb:
Killes,
That's "Mr. Killesreiter" for you.
don't you see that it's this horrible condescending attitude that is the whole problem? Do you not *want* newbies? Are you allergic?
When you've helped more Newbie-Developers(!) than I (in #drupal), you may make such remarks.
New folks are often in a rush to get their first project out the door. It's understandable. That's why they picked a CMS and didn't sit down to write an application. So they're in a hurry, glance at IRC channels, and find one that looks like it will help. *This will continue to happen no matter what the channel charters are*
So? We'll send them to the right place.
So, my vote is, let's work with it instead of fighting it all the time. Mr. Killesreiter
See, there you got it right.
we're having fun while the tumbleweeds blow in #drupal. Join us! It's your destiny ;-)
No. I actually don't mind that there is less traffic now. Cheers, Gerhard -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFGr8p3fg6TFvELooQRAktFAKC2Uz6ewwq9je0mDJPJaSLqECRnIACfZNRv lv/tD+qZyCkpxlwGgnfX5u8= =bjWd -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Quoth KILLES "When you've helped more Newbie-Developers(!) than I (in #drupal), you may make such remarks." Why does the channel matter? I've helped dozens or hundreds of fledgling folks take their first steps. You're probably the one who sent them to #drupal-support where I helped them. Development support abounds in that channel because some folks are actually scared to poke their heads into drupal (jeez, um guess why?) "working with it" entails *doing what people expect*, not shoving them off. --fletch On 7/31/07, Gerhard Killesreiter <gerhard@killesreiter.de> wrote:
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Dave Fletcher schrieb:
Killes,
That's "Mr. Killesreiter" for you.
don't you see that it's this horrible condescending attitude that is the whole problem? Do you not *want* newbies? Are you allergic?
When you've helped more Newbie-Developers(!) than I (in #drupal), you may make such remarks.
New folks are often in a rush to get their first project out the door. It's understandable. That's why they picked a CMS and didn't sit down to write an application. So they're in a hurry, glance at IRC channels, and find one that looks like it will help. *This will continue to happen no matter what the channel charters are*
So? We'll send them to the right place.
So, my vote is, let's work with it instead of fighting it all the time. Mr. Killesreiter
See, there you got it right.
we're having fun while the tumbleweeds blow in #drupal. Join us! It's your destiny ;-)
No.
I actually don't mind that there is less traffic now.
Cheers, Gerhard
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Actually, rather than fight over this, I'll put 4 possible options to prevent the starvation scenario: Merge scenarios: 1. Either the developers live with it and say what the hell, we'll live with these pesky support questions and just merge back to #drupal, cancelling #drupal-support altogether. 2. Somehow put a new message in #drupal saying "support questions between 3-5 GMT", no telling if that would be any different than the current message saying go to #drupal-support. Effectively cancelling #drupal-support Split scenarios: 3. To somehow redirect #drupal goers to #drupal-dev at specific times in the day (I'm not an IRC guru so I don't know if this could even be done), so they would sort of feel that between 3-5 GMT they're catching the best people capable of answering they're questions without even realizing they're in #drupal-dev. Developers will know what's happening and will accept this for a couple of hours a day. This seems very promising but I don't know if it's implementable. 4. Assign 4+ support guys who can at least guarantee a couple of hours in the #drupal channel a day, actually, why not go for 20+, the more the better. That way it would become sort of an ethical responsibility to care of the baby drupal-ers in #drupal :D On 8/1/07, Dave Fletcher <fletch@splendora.com> wrote:
Quoth KILLES "When you've helped more Newbie-Developers(!) than I (in #drupal), you may make such remarks."
Why does the channel matter? I've helped dozens or hundreds of fledgling folks take their first steps. You're probably the one who sent them to #drupal-support where I helped them. Development support abounds in that channel because some folks are actually scared to poke their heads into drupal (jeez, um guess why?)
"working with it" entails *doing what people expect*, not shoving them off.
--fletch
On 7/31/07, Gerhard Killesreiter <gerhard@killesreiter.de> wrote:
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Dave Fletcher schrieb:
Killes,
That's "Mr. Killesreiter" for you.
don't you see that it's this horrible condescending attitude that is the whole problem? Do you not *want* newbies? Are you allergic?
When you've helped more Newbie-Developers(!) than I (in #drupal), you may make such remarks.
New folks are often in a rush to get their first project out the door. It's understandable. That's why they picked a CMS and didn't sit down to write an application. So they're in a hurry, glance at IRC channels, and find one that looks like it will help. *This will continue to happen no matter what the channel charters are*
So? We'll send them to the right place.
So, my vote is, let's work with it instead of fighting it all the time. Mr. Killesreiter
See, there you got it right.
we're having fun while the tumbleweeds blow in #drupal. Join us! It's your destiny ;-)
No.
I actually don't mind that there is less traffic now.
Cheers, Gerhard
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On 31-Jul-07, at 7:35 PM, Gerhard Killesreiter wrote:
So, I don't see why charters can change, with development in #drupal-dev (and only development), then #drupal become community focused, has support, infra discussions, and everything else that is not development.
I am not going to agree to this.
I'd really prefer not either. But see? It doesn't matter what me or Gerhard think. Drupal's community changes, and always has, by the actions of its individuals. Obviously, enough people felt okay with 'taking our toys and going elsewhere' for #drupal-dev to happen in the first place; if even a fraction of those people were actively helping in #drupal make the channel more friendly to newcomers, we wouldn't be having this discussion, because the change would've already been made. One or two 'support?s' against an army of people spending hours of their time helping people with their problems would make the switch right there. If this happened, us old curmudgeons like me, who believes that IRC netiquette is an essential element of respect and shows value for other peoples' time and the culture of a community, and who believes the Drupal project is ultimately best served with #drupal being a bustling hub of development activity rather than a cluster of people who don't show this basic element of respect asking a bunch of questions that are likely already available in the handbooks, we would be forced to forget our old ways and come along for the ride. However, this isn't happening. Instead, #drupal-dev folks are staying in their corner, #drupal folks are still treating it like we always have, and the end result is dividing the traffic in #drupal, and hurting the project's face to newcomers as a whole. Since the people who founded #drupal-dev are the ones who rocked the boat, I believe it is their responsibility to steer us to our final destination. So what's it going to be? Are you guys going to hang out in #drupal and answer support questions all day? Or are you going to come back to the fold? -Angie
On Jul 31, 2007, at 4:54 PM, Angela Byron wrote:
Since the people who founded #drupal-dev are the ones who rocked the boat, I believe it is their responsibility to steer us to our final destination. So what's it going to be? Are you guys going to hang out in #drupal and answer support questions all day? Or are you going to come back to the fold?
Oh come on. You've seen the replies we just got when we tried to be logical and reasonable about it. I thought I did a good job of providing evidence for my position. I'm not interested in trying to have a debate in this climate, where the only replies in favor of the old status quo are either: "I won't give up the channel to people too stupid to use IRC" or "Since you rocked the boat, it's now your responsibility to either provide free support all day or admit you were wrong for wanting to change anything". And, frankly, how dare you accuse Earl and myself (for example) for not providing enough support? Like we haven't done our share to help the Drupal project, writing docs, answering questions (in and out of IRC), improving the support tools on d.o, training the next layer of developers and contributors, etc, etc. I'm not even talking about the code we write. Please. -Derek (dww)
On 31-Jul-07, at 8:19 PM, Derek Wright wrote:
On Jul 31, 2007, at 4:54 PM, Angela Byron wrote:
Since the people who founded #drupal-dev are the ones who rocked the boat, I believe it is their responsibility to steer us to our final destination. So what's it going to be? Are you guys going to hang out in #drupal and answer support questions all day? Or are you going to come back to the fold?
Oh come on. You've seen the replies we just got when we tried to be logical and reasonable about it. I thought I did a good job of providing evidence for my position. I'm not interested in trying to have a debate in this climate, where the only replies in favor of the old status quo are either:
"I won't give up the channel to people too stupid to use IRC"
or
"Since you rocked the boat, it's now your responsibility to either provide free support all day or admit you were wrong for wanting to change anything".
And, frankly, how dare you accuse Earl and myself (for example) for not providing enough support? Like we haven't done our share to help the Drupal project, writing docs, answering questions (in and out of IRC), improving the support tools on d.o, training the next layer of developers and contributors, etc, etc. I'm not even talking about the code we write. Please.
Yes, that was very poorly worded, and you have my full apologies. It was never my intention to disparage the efforts that people like you and Earl are putting into the Drupal community. It also was not my intention to start a fight or an argument -- I'm just very concerned with the impact this is having / will have on the community as a whole. My intention, rather, was to drive home the fact that when smart, awesome people leave #drupal, it hurts the project as a whole, because #drupal is where the vast majority of users are going to go. Most users don't consider themselves "developer" material, and will never catch all of the great discussions going on in the #drupal-dev channel because they'll assume themselves too stupid to fit in. And as a result, Drupal misses out on new contributors who might be passively idling in #drupal, see people talking about some issue or another, and get sucked in. Couple this with a complete lack of people handling the 'support?' questions, and IMO the project as a whole is worse off. 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. -Angie
Why not focus on improving rather than bickering? With what's been said, and if there's no chance of starvation since #drupal-support does actually have a good number of friendly drupal support people, changing #drupal-support to #drupal is the way to go. +ves : 1. the devs who are bothered by newb's could lurk in -dev without getting bothered, too often, that is ;) 2. support seeking people will happen to fall in drupal heaven when they guess #drupal's the place to go for support, good first impression 3. this will be confirming to channel standards. -ves : Are there any? On 8/1/07, Angela Byron <drupal-devel@webchick.net> wrote:
On 31-Jul-07, at 8:19 PM, Derek Wright wrote:
On Jul 31, 2007, at 4:54 PM, Angela Byron wrote:
Since the people who founded #drupal-dev are the ones who rocked the boat, I believe it is their responsibility to steer us to our final destination. So what's it going to be? Are you guys going to hang out in #drupal and answer support questions all day? Or are you going to come back to the fold?
Oh come on. You've seen the replies we just got when we tried to be logical and reasonable about it. I thought I did a good job of providing evidence for my position. I'm not interested in trying to have a debate in this climate, where the only replies in favor of the old status quo are either:
"I won't give up the channel to people too stupid to use IRC"
or
"Since you rocked the boat, it's now your responsibility to either provide free support all day or admit you were wrong for wanting to change anything".
And, frankly, how dare you accuse Earl and myself (for example) for not providing enough support? Like we haven't done our share to help the Drupal project, writing docs, answering questions (in and out of IRC), improving the support tools on d.o, training the next layer of developers and contributors, etc, etc. I'm not even talking about the code we write. Please.
Yes, that was very poorly worded, and you have my full apologies. It was never my intention to disparage the efforts that people like you and Earl are putting into the Drupal community. It also was not my intention to start a fight or an argument -- I'm just very concerned with the impact this is having / will have on the community as a whole.
My intention, rather, was to drive home the fact that when smart, awesome people leave #drupal, it hurts the project as a whole, because #drupal is where the vast majority of users are going to go. Most users don't consider themselves "developer" material, and will never catch all of the great discussions going on in the #drupal-dev channel because they'll assume themselves too stupid to fit in. And as a result, Drupal misses out on new contributors who might be passively idling in #drupal, see people talking about some issue or another, and get sucked in. Couple this with a complete lack of people handling the 'support?' questions, and IMO the project as a whole is worse off.
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.
-Angie
By the way, I don't see a merging of the channels back into #drupal as the way to go. I would say that when developers get hardened enough they will seek the #-dev channel just to see what's cooking in the high altitude drupal atmosphere. So they'll go there looking for that, rather than throwing people who can't tell a node from a block in the midst of the formAPI anarchy :P AA On 8/1/07, Ashraf Amayreh <mistknight@gmail.com> wrote:
Why not focus on improving rather than bickering? With what's been said, and if there's no chance of starvation since #drupal-support does actually have a good number of friendly drupal support people, changing #drupal-support to #drupal is the way to go.
+ves : 1. the devs who are bothered by newb's could lurk in -dev without getting bothered, too often, that is ;) 2. support seeking people will happen to fall in drupal heaven when they guess #drupal's the place to go for support, good first impression 3. this will be confirming to channel standards.
-ves : Are there any?
On 8/1/07, Angela Byron <drupal-devel@webchick.net> wrote:
On 31-Jul-07, at 8:19 PM, Derek Wright wrote:
On Jul 31, 2007, at 4:54 PM, Angela Byron wrote:
Since the people who founded #drupal-dev are the ones who rocked the boat, I believe it is their responsibility to steer us to our final destination. So what's it going to be? Are you guys going to hang out in #drupal and answer support questions all day? Or are you going to come back to the fold?
Oh come on. You've seen the replies we just got when we tried to be logical and reasonable about it. I thought I did a good job of providing evidence for my position. I'm not interested in trying to have a debate in this climate, where the only replies in favor of the old status quo are either:
"I won't give up the channel to people too stupid to use IRC"
or
"Since you rocked the boat, it's now your responsibility to either provide free support all day or admit you were wrong for wanting to change anything".
And, frankly, how dare you accuse Earl and myself (for example) for not providing enough support? Like we haven't done our share to help the Drupal project, writing docs, answering questions (in and out of IRC), improving the support tools on d.o, training the next layer of developers and contributors, etc, etc. I'm not even talking about the code we write. Please.
Yes, that was very poorly worded, and you have my full apologies. It was never my intention to disparage the efforts that people like you and Earl are putting into the Drupal community. It also was not my intention to start a fight or an argument -- I'm just very concerned with the impact this is having / will have on the community as a whole.
My intention, rather, was to drive home the fact that when smart, awesome people leave #drupal, it hurts the project as a whole, because #drupal is where the vast majority of users are going to go. Most users don't consider themselves "developer" material, and will never catch all of the great discussions going on in the #drupal-dev channel because they'll assume themselves too stupid to fit in. And as a result, Drupal misses out on new contributors who might be passively idling in #drupal, see people talking about some issue or another, and get sucked in. Couple this with a complete lack of people handling the 'support?' questions, and IMO the project as a whole is worse off.
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.
-Angie
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.
This will be a bit of topic, since I believe that finally people will do whatever they need to do (including trying to convince people to see a big picture -- that is commendable too). Anyway, in my few visits to #drupal and #dupal-support a while back there was one thing which caught my eye. Not so much the "support?!" incidents, but the new people who were dangling for hours between the two channels asking questions like "how do I catch that argument from the URL?" or "why doesn't this form work?". We support guys couldn't answer and the developers seemed busy most of the time, while almost everyone was present on both channels. And they just waited and repeated the questions whenever they thought they had a chance. I hear that #drupal-dojo has been created since that time and I hope it is active enough to cover the "new generations" of developers.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Cog Rusty schrieb:
This will be a bit of topic, since I believe that finally people will do whatever they need to do (including trying to convince people to see a big picture -- that is commendable too).
Anyway, in my few visits to #drupal and #dupal-support a while back there was one thing which caught my eye. Not so much the "support?!" incidents, but the new people who were dangling for hours between the two channels asking questions like "how do I catch that argument from the URL?"
I'd typically answer such questions in #drupal.
or "why doesn't this form work?".
These I might not since they could involve more work.
We support guys couldn't answer and the developers seemed busy most of the time,
There's no entitlement to answers on IRC.
while almost everyone was present on both channels. And they just waited and repeated the questions whenever they thought they had a chance.
That's rude and you should tell them.
I hear that #drupal-dojo has been created since that time and I hope it is active enough to cover the "new generations" of developers.
I've no idea why that was created. Cheers, Gerhard -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFGsEMlfg6TFvELooQRAmUWAJ9/YoH/axsWLI1bRCIj9uKK/4tZBQCgjJSP yyBwo8q2skC2r/IPiTV4AD4= =GeF5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On 8/1/07, Gerhard Killesreiter <gerhard@killesreiter.de> wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Cog Rusty schrieb:
This will be a bit of topic, since I believe that finally people will do whatever they need to do (including trying to convince people to see a big picture -- that is commendable too).
Anyway, in my few visits to #drupal and #dupal-support a while back there was one thing which caught my eye. Not so much the "support?!" incidents, but the new people who were dangling for hours between the two channels asking questions like "how do I catch that argument from the URL?"
I'd typically answer such questions in #drupal.
or "why doesn't this form work?".
These I might not since they could involve more work.
We support guys couldn't answer and the developers seemed busy most of the time,
There's no entitlement to answers on IRC.
I would be willing to take this one step further and say that there is no entitlement to anything anywhere in a volunteer project. But while each person does what s/he considers best, one can always take a look at the available human resources resulting from this and try to address possible problems with how efficiently people can access them.
while almost everyone was present on both channels. And they just waited and repeated the questions whenever they thought they had a chance.
That's rude and you should tell them.
I hear that #drupal-dojo has been created since that time and I hope it is active enough to cover the "new generations" of developers.
I've no idea why that was created.
Cheers, Gerhard -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
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On 7/31/07, Gerhard Killesreiter <gerhard@killesreiter.de> wrote:
Khalid Baheyeldin schrieb:
As I understood it was:
#drupal - development focused #drupal-support - support focused - for newbies
The problem is that #drupal is the first place newbies will think of to get support. Once they are there, they are greeted with the "support?" reply telling them to go to #drupal-support.
No, they actually get a message when they join and there is a topic to look at.
These are client dependent, and you should not assume that all people see them. On kopete (the default KDE IM client), the channel message just scrolls up as you get a bazillion messages saying userblah is now Away. The title is also next to useless, since it only appears if I mouse over the window title, and then it appears truncated on a single line. Telling users to go get another client is not an option.
This can be offputting and make people feel unwelcome. They
ask the first question and get a reply that amounts to : "we don't serve your type here, buzz off!" (plagiarised from Esmerel)
"You didn't read the topic or pay attention to the join message, buzz off" is more accurate.
And how does that reflect on the project as a whole? Not positively for sure.
So, I don't see why charters can change, with development
in #drupal-dev (and only development), then #drupal become community focused, has support, infra discussions, and everything else that is not development.
I am not going to agree to this.
We seldom agree, so that is OK.
Let me re-phrase that: I am not going to give up #drupal to the people who can't properly use IRC anyway.
Read about the September that never ended. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September The same goes for Spam. It changed email forever. The world changes. Our little niche gets discovered and the influx begins. Drupal is growing, more people will come in. We have to deal with it! If the unwashed ones are 1%, it was not a problem when the community were only 100 people. Now with tens of thousands, they will become so. Cheers,
Gerhard -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
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Here is another example of assuming that one's user interface is the same across all clients: GnuPG is not interpreted by Gmail, and I just see line noise. One can't assume everyone sees the same interface. -- 2bits.com http://2bits.com Drupal development, customization and consulting.
On freenode, the big unhyphenated channels like #ubuntu, #gentoo, #debian, #rubyonrails are open to support questions. Then you have more specialized channels for developer discussion like #mysql-dev, #kde4-devel etc. You can find a similar pattern on lists for many FOSS projects, e.g. a "project" list and "project-dev" list. --mark On 7/31/07, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb@2bits.com> wrote:
As I understood it was:
#drupal - development focused #drupal-support - support focused - for newbies
The problem is that #drupal is the first place newbies will think of to get support. Once they are there, they are greeted with the "support?" reply telling them to go to #drupal-support.
This can be offputting and make people feel unwelcome. They ask the first question and get a reply that amounts to : "we don't serve your type here, buzz off!" (plagiarised from Esmerel)
So, I don't see why charters can change, with development in #drupal-dev (and only development), then #drupal become community focused, has support, infra discussions, and everything else that is not development.
I agree with Mark, why the fuss? #drupal should actually be the place where newbies go to. While the more specific and oriented channels should be the less obvious ones because they're for the seasoned developers who most likely have come to know the channels by heart. Anyone who goes off to search for drupal help will most certainly guess that #drupal is the place for that. If it's for the sake of preventing people from entering and leaving the room immediately after seeing the message, that seems like a good enough reason. Also, what harm could possibly result in that? I mean what're the -ves? The only thing I could worry about is causing a starvation in the support channel, leaving the newbie's high and dry, so to speak. Otherwise this seems perfectly logical. #drupal for support, #drupal-dev for development, now the question of how to prevent knowledge starvation in the support channel is a different thing, the best support people are obviously the developers themselves, suggestions? On 8/1/07, mark burdett <mfburdett@gmail.com> wrote:
On freenode, the big unhyphenated channels like #ubuntu, #gentoo, #debian, #rubyonrails are open to support questions. Then you have more specialized channels for developer discussion like #mysql-dev, #kde4-devel etc.
You can find a similar pattern on lists for many FOSS projects, e.g. a "project" list and "project-dev" list.
--mark
On 7/31/07, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb@2bits.com> wrote:
As I understood it was:
#drupal - development focused #drupal-support - support focused - for newbies
The problem is that #drupal is the first place newbies will think of to get support. Once they are there, they are greeted with the "support?" reply telling them to go to #drupal-support.
This can be offputting and make people feel unwelcome. They ask the first question and get a reply that amounts to : "we don't serve your type here, buzz off!" (plagiarised from Esmerel)
So, I don't see why charters can change, with development in #drupal-dev (and only development), then #drupal become community focused, has support, infra discussions, and everything else that is not development.
Khalid Baheyeldin wrote:
As I understood it was:
#drupal - development focused #drupal-support - support focused - for newbies
The problem is that #drupal is the first place newbies will think of to get support. Once they are there, they are greeted with the "support?" reply telling them to go to #drupal-support.
This can be offputting and make people feel unwelcome. They ask the first question and get a reply that amounts to : "we don't serve your type here, buzz off!" (plagiarised from Esmerel)
So, I don't see why charters can change, with development in #drupal-dev (and only development), then #drupal become community focused, has support, infra discussions, and everything else that is not development.
I think this is very reasonable (although I am not one of the heavy IRC-heads, I am rarely seen on IRC). I would like to point out that the PHP development channel used to be called "php-dev", and lots of people thought that is the support channel and asked, well, PHP development questions (as-in development *with* PHP, not development *of* PHP). So the guys simply renamed the list "internals", so it clearly shows off that it is for internal stuff. This kind of renaming in the Drupal case (to internals) would be quite unwelcoming, masking the developer community as being closed. But I think repurposing #drupal to stand for support stuff and using #drupal-dev for development stuff makes a lot of sense. Gabor
On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 18:52:06 -0400, "Khalid Baheyeldin" <kb@2bits.com> wrote:
So please, #drupal-dev goers, either finish what you started by actively working in #drupal to make it more newbie-friendly, or abandon the experiment. So far, this feels like a net loss for the community.
-Angie
Seems the main issue is that this "fork" was not discussed widely enough in the community.
How about repurposing or a charter change of #drupal vs. #drupal-dev?
#drupal-dev would be for purely development talk, and #drupal for everything drupal (except support), including infrastructure, ...etc.
How about getting a discussion going this time on what to do?
I have no super-strong preference either way at this point; I was only in one round of the "what is drupal for" debates and I didn't really care enough to start a second. However, I do favor not having a multitude of "core" #drupal-* channels. I know there's a bunch that I already don't go to; I don't know what I'm missing there. :-) I really don't want to have to lurk in 3 channels to get the full set. Two is enough. So whatever happens, #drupal should either be for support or development. Having both a separate support and separate development channel doesn't really make sense to me. Which we have, at this point, I don't really care, but let's only have one or the other. --Larry Garfield
On Jul 31, 2007, at 3:25 PM, Angela Byron wrote:
I guess the reasoning for this was because they disagreed with newbies who didn't read the topic getting 'support?' in their face when they join our "official" channel.
It's 100% obvious that #drupal-dev is an appropriate place for dev- related questions. Variable and function names should be self documenting, and IRC channel names should be, too. "All problems in computer science can be solved by caching or adding another level of indirection" (well, almost). So, let's just make #drupal a locked room, with a channel topic and a bot that prints it out again whenever someone tries to speak, pointing them to the appropriate room for what they want. No matter what our lofty ideals about the nature of our "official channel" may be, people have, do, and *will always* come into the "main" room and just start asking support questions. 1.5 years in #drupal has taught me that. Channel topics *are ignored* by many people. #drupal seems like a good place for a newbie to go ask questions. We can't fight the expectations of new people. All that happens when we do this in our "contribution focused channel" is that we create a hostile climate whenever someone new shows up and are insulted about how stupid they are for not reading the channel topic. It's annoying for the developers and it's alienating for the newbies. To the extent that our "official channel" is a level of indirection, pointing people to the right place for the kind of contribution they want to make, that sends just the right message IMHO. Drupal is about content management, and we make it easy to find what they're looking for... ;) -Derek (dww) p.s. I'm not interested in a fight, either. Earl gets 100% support from me for his reply, too. I already don't have enough time or energy for my current level of Drupal activity, and a fruitless debate over IRC channel names isn't my idea of progress. p.p.s. killes and I were just discussing the merits of adding a #drupal-infrastructure room earlier today. That's probably another good self-documenting channel to add to the mix. I'd be willing to hang out there, too, for example. I believe that a larger number of more focused channels would be a good thing.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Derek Wright schrieb:
p.p.s. killes and I were just discussing the merits of adding a #drupal-infrastructure room earlier today.
I wasn't really serious about that. Now that there's enough space in #drupal, there is actually no reason for such a channel. Cheers, Gerhard -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFGr8sOfg6TFvELooQRAm3XAKCyDF/wjV3neH8FI6NkaWx0bDTkuwCcDrwW oniAKGD+FDxZmckW4Epfu4U= =z4Qw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
participants (15)
-
Addison Berry -
andrew morton -
Angela Byron -
Ashraf Amayreh -
Cog Rusty -
Dave Fletcher -
Derek Wright -
Earl Miles -
Gabor Hojtsy -
Gerhard Killesreiter -
Khalid Baheyeldin -
Larry Garfield -
mark burdett -
Robin Monks -
Sam Tresler