[development] adoption for 'abandoned' modules?

[Angela Byron]

On 20-Jan-07, at 9:58 PM, Darren Oh wrote:

> On Jan 19, 2007, at 10:31 PM, Steven Peck wrote:
>
>> Um, and those that out of frustration with people using the contact
>> forum to mail them directly for support instead of using the issue
>> queue?  Do we disable their contrib. modules?
>
> Of course not. We put the project up for adoption so someone who is  
> willing to be contacted can become the maintainer. The original  
> developer retains full access to the project. The new maintainer  
> should have access to the contact forms of all the developers for  
> the project in order to contact them when necessary.

Sorry, but I totally disagree with this.

Drupal.org provides a built-in means of contacting maintainers to get  
support: issues tagged "support request" ... responsible maintainers  
will be watching their issue queues and responding to these. A huge  
added advantage is that other people can search the issue queue for  
their same issue. E-mail, on the other hand, goes into a black hole,  
benefits no one apart from the support requester, and results in the  
maintainer having to repeat themselves over and over again.

We shouldn't be encouraging people to e-mail maintainers. We should  
be encouraging people to use issue queues, because that's where  
community development and support happens. I specifically disabled my  
contact form for this reason. I know other maintainers have as well.

-Angie