[drupal-devel] Let's accept more interim solutions

[Chris Messina]

I would love to see this happen as well, since some of my more radical
ideas are summarily shot down for the cost of implementing them
cleanly. While I agree that measured and iterative solutions are best
for Drupal in general, not being able to "soft-fork" to prove my ideas
through test-bed implementations means that good innovations are often
ignored.

Nedjo also voiced this idea quite well and I would think that it might
be a useful exercise to consider how Drupal's project management tool
might better support this kind of soft-forking within the current
review framework.

Chris


On 4/18/05, K B <kbahey at gmail.com> wrote:
> I add my voice to Nedjo and Moshe.
> 
> I don't want to use labels like conservative and purists, but I have
> seen too many ideas shot down because they add options to the site
> admin interface.
> 
> For example, we removed the "Remember me" option from the login screen
> of Drupal, and forced all users to take whatever value that the site
> chose to put in settings.php. Now there are people who are asking for
> this feature back again.
> 
> Another example is an option to disable the printer friendly link from
> book pages. While this is not an ideal solution, a followup generic
> proposal was rejected (with some good arguments against it), but no
> alternative was put forward nor discussed. And hence the main issue
> (site admin and themers cannot hide which links show for nodes).
> 
> We have to be careful and not be accepting of every idea proposed,
> otherwise Drupal will lose its clean and modular nature, and become
> another piece of spaghetti code. But we should also be open minded a
> bit more than we are now.
> 
> ----
> Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 14:48:04 -0400
> From: Moshe Weitzman <weitzman at tejasa.com>
> Subject: Re: [drupal-devel] Let's accept more interim solutions
> To: drupal-devel at drupal.org
> Message-ID: <426400E4.1090009 at tejasa.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> Nedjo - I have long wanted our project to move in this direction. Thanks
> for expressing the idea so eloquently.
> 
> Nedjo Rogers wrote:
> > I'm thinking we should give more room in Drupal to accepting and applying
> > "interim" solutions: contributions that are clear improvements without
> > necessarily addressing every conceivable objection.
> >
> > The high threshold we set for accepting changes has definite benefits--it
> > keeps the code clean and functional.  Yet, if the bar is too high, it also
> > has significant costs.  It discourages developers and wastes development
> > time and expertise on repeated updating.  And, equally importantly, it
> > leaves problems unaddressed.
> >
> > I feel we need to give more weight to the question: what are the costs of
> > doing nothing?  Often, these are significant enough to justify implementing
> > a partial or interim solution.
> >
> > Many problems don't lend themselves to full and immediate solution.  Rather,
> > building a solution is an iterative process.  Applying more 'first steps' is
> > a spur to the development process.  It keeps developers engaged and builds
> > momentum for fixing remaining details.
> >
> > In sum: let's be a bit less conservative, a bit more open to new ideas as
> > they come in.  There's nothing sacred about the code base.  It's something
> > we collectively build, fixing problems, opening new possibilities (complete
> > with their own issues and problems), moving beyond the limitations of the
> > inception while staying true to the founding goals and vision.
> >
> > Nedjo
> >
>