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

[Derek Wright]

On Jul 31, 2007, at 3:25 PM, Angela Byron wrote:

> I guess the reasoning for this was because they disagreed with  
> newbies who didn't read the topic getting 'support?' in their face  
> when they join our "official" channel.

It's 100% obvious that #drupal-dev is an appropriate place for dev- 
related questions.  Variable and function names should be self  
documenting, and IRC channel names should be, too.

"All problems in computer science can be solved by caching or adding  
another level of indirection" (well, almost).  So, let's just make  
#drupal a locked room, with a channel topic and a bot that prints it  
out again whenever someone tries to speak, pointing them to the  
appropriate room for what they want.

No matter what our lofty ideals about the nature of our "official  
channel" may be, people have, do, and *will always* come into the  
"main" room and just start asking support questions.  1.5 years in  
#drupal has taught me that.  Channel topics *are ignored* by many  
people.  #drupal seems like a good place for a newbie to go ask  
questions.  We can't fight the expectations of new people.  All that  
happens when we do this in our "contribution focused channel" is that  
we create a hostile climate whenever someone new shows up and are  
insulted about how stupid they are for not reading the channel  
topic.  It's annoying for the developers and it's alienating for the  
newbies.

To the extent that our "official channel" is a level of indirection,  
pointing people to the right place for the kind of contribution they  
want to make, that sends just the right message IMHO.  Drupal is  
about content management, and we make it easy to find what they're  
looking for... ;)


-Derek (dww)


p.s. I'm not interested in a fight, either.  Earl gets 100% support  
from me for his reply, too.  I already don't have enough time or  
energy for my current level of Drupal activity, and a fruitless  
debate over IRC channel names isn't my idea of progress.

p.p.s. killes and I were just discussing the merits of adding a  
#drupal-infrastructure room earlier today.  That's probably another  
good self-documenting channel to add to the mix.  I'd be willing to  
hang out there, too, for example.  I believe that a larger number of  
more focused channels would be a good thing.