[development] #drupal / #drupal-dev split considered harmful

[Angela Byron]

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