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

[Derek Wright]

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.