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Subject: Re: [development] #drupal and #drupal-contribute split (Was: Re: Proposal: Move all dev support off this list to new StackExchange site) On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 7:45 PM, Angela Byron <drupal-devel@webchick.net> wrote:

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Yes, this *absolutely* happened with D7. It was an *incredibly* small "core" group of < 20-30 people who resulted in Drupal 7 ever actually shipping. Post-code freeze, which more-or-less coincided with this IRC policy change, I can think of only a small handful of new contributors who came on board who were not already involved previously.

Now, since there's really no way to quantify data around this, it's difficult to say what percentage of this lack of contributors phenomenon was related to this policy change, what was the "post-code freeze blues", how much of it is steeper requirements to get a core patch in (e.g. tests, subsystem maintainer sign-off), how much of it is the fact that certain members of our community were paid to care about bugs (e.g. Acquians and Examiner.comians) and others weren't, or what exactly the breakdown there was. I'm sure all of these, and more, were factors.

But "not have a clear effect so far"? The *freaking rolling of 7.0* happened in such a silo, with not even a peep about it in the main IRC channel, for crying out loud! How much more "us" vs. "them" can you possibly get? :(

I do think you have this feeling because you were at the helm. I don't think the small handful of people scrambling to get a release out was any different with Drupal 6 or earlier versions. Just ask chx about the form API's introduction and Drupal 4.7's release,

I am not chx but I somehow participated... It's just a fact of life that during the last stage of the development process participation is very complicated due to the long history that most issues have. To understand that history would be very painful for a newcomer.

the story will resonate very well with you :D The only difference is that we grew a huge base of followers who don't care as much.

These people have always existed. Their relative proportion may have increased. Cheers, Gerhard -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAk2HRDoACgkQfg6TFvELooQY3ACeOOj3UVVpp7m9s/+2YjXB4IDd oIIAnA6BvlpTbQOzNl22Of6BGVtp3vM0 =KOo6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----