[development] Remove top-level admin menu items

[Daniel F. Kudwien]

This goes out to some maintainers, specifically related to

- Notifications / Messaging
- Organic Groups
- Panels

Those and related/dependent modules are implementing top-level menu items, e.g.

- admin/messaging
- admin/og
- admin/panels

in the style of Drupal 4.7, instead of using the new administrative categories and structure we have since Drupal 5.x.  This is not only confusing, but also clutters the administrative interface - especially, if Administration menu module is installed.

I see no reason why it needs to be this way.  Clearly, for example, Organic Groups and Panels are both tools to build a Drupal site -- the proper location would thus be below "Site building".

In the special case of Notifications/Messaging, the situation gets even worse: It mixes administrative items for different purposes into one top-level item, meaning that permanent site configuration settings and continuously required administrative functions are located in one, bloated container with no clear distinction.  Furthermore, granting administrative users the permission to administer user subscriptions will expose a new top-level menu item "Notifications & Messaging" to them -- the proper location for managing user subscriptions would be below "User management".

Unfortunately, my request for changing this in Notifications was immediately won't fixed [1], which is why I see the need for a broader community consensus.  I know that a change like this could probably only done in upcoming major versions of all affected modules.

If the only thing that prevents this from changing are patches, then I'll happily submit some.


Thanks,
Daniel

[1] http://drupal.org/node/366489