[development] Proposal: Move all dev support off this list to new StackExchange site

[David Metzler]

I'm a bit more hopeful than Angie, although I joined the list pretty close to the time she indicated people started leaving it.   Not sure where that puts me.  

I don't know how many people do, but I respond to development questions on the support list, and will continue to do so.  If enough seasoned developers agree to hang out there then I think it can work for that.   It was a minor annoyance that some of the "my code doesn't work, why?"  questions are copied to that list and get answered twice by two groups of people.   The recent questions about indexes, and install hooks were asked and answered on the support list as well.  No surprise that the user got the same answers in both places. 

I don't think we're clear about the intentions of the lists on drupal.org.  Look at what we say on the mailing list tab.  It's unclear to me as a developer where the best place to post "my code doesn't work, why?" questions are supposed to go.  Read them and put yourself in the role of a mailing list seeking noob contrib developer and ask yourself where you'd go. 

I totally agree that this needs to stay tightly affiliated with drupal.org. 


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On Mar 17, 2011, at 7:58 PM, Angela Byron wrote:

> 
> On 2011-03-17, at 7:21 PM, Walt Daniels wrote:
> 
>> >And perhaps we could change the name of this mailing list to devel-support.
>> That still sounds like the place for noobs to get support .
> 
> Well, that's essentially what this list has become, and why most of the people who used to frequent the list back in 2005-2007 no longer do.
> 
> It used to be that this list was for high-level strategical discussions around core/contrib/d.o development, active brainstorming on big problem solving, important announcements that affected CVS (now Git) account holders, and those sort of things. What we currently (badly) use "meta" issues and a variety of fragmented groups on g.d.o for, was what this development list was for at one time. Support questions were directed to the forums or to IRC.
> 
> However, over time, the volume of support requests coming into this list for "Is there a module that does what I want?" and "How come my code is broken?" have far out-stripped most of the veterans' ability to ask, repeatedly, for them to be taken off-list. And so most of them have by now vacated the premises in favour of lower-traffic IRC channels like #drupal-contribute or to groups.drupal.org silos. These mediums have now mostly taken over the core function the mailing list used to, but in an ad-hoc, "you only know about it if you happened to be there or if some kind soul wrote a summary in the issue queue about it" fashion. This "support creep" has been happening in lots of other places too over the past couple of years: #drupal, issue queues, etc. and it all only exacerbates the problem of the more dedicated and hard working individuals withdrawing away from the larger community in an attempt to maintain some sort of sanity. All of which is *extremely* detrimental to our community, including the people who need support. 
> 
> I believe Randy's proposal is an attempt to rectify this situation, and get this mailing list back to its roots, by providing an alternate mechanism for both support and important announcements. I don't agree that shuffling contributors off of Drupal.org is the answer (I have a long-winded, ranty blog post about this I need to write up sometime...), but I also frankly don't believe that this list will ever overcome the stigma/reputation that's grown up around it among the core group of contributors, even if we were all to do a concerted effort to get the content back under quality control. It's easier to just give up and call a spade a spade (or, in this case, a development support list a development support list). :(
> 
> -Angie
> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 10:07 PM, Randy Fay <randy at randyfay.com> wrote:
>> OK, I have another proposal:
>> 
>> Let's move all non-support (announcements to developers primarily, or policy discussion, that sort of thing) off this mailing list and onto a Developers group on Groups.drupal.org, where only announcement-type material is posted. That way those who want to use this as a support list can do so, and those who want to use StackExchange and other venues can do so, but everybody knows where non-support things of interest to developers are announced.
>> 
>> And perhaps we could change the name of this mailing list to devel-support.
>> 
>> -Randy
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 7:32 PM, nan wich <nan_wich at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> -1 for me. I have yet to find an actual discussion on SE.
>>  
>> Nancy
>> 
>>  
>> Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -- Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> From: Randy Fay <randy at randyfay.com>
>> To: development <development at drupal.org>
>> Sent: Thu, March 17, 2011 1:24:34 PM
>> Subject: [development] Proposal: Move all dev support off this list to new StackExchange site
>> 
>> The new http://drupal.stackexchange.com is now live, and several outstanding Drupal contributors are monitoring and contributing to it.
>> 
>> It seems like we'd get better long-term use of people's time if we did development support over there, where it's searchable, and where repeat questions can be answered by an internet search instead of everybody reading and answering the same thing over and over.
>> 
>> And yes, I'm in favor of providing this capability on Drupal.org, as per http://drupal.org/node/1047632, but for now, what about taking dev support off this list since there's such a good alternative?
>> 
>> -Randy
>> 
>> -- 
>> Randy Fay
>> Drupal Module and Site Development
>> randy at randyfay.com
>> +1  970.462.7450
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Randy Fay
>> Drupal Module and Site Development
>> randy at randyfay.com
>> +1  970.462.7450
>> 
>> 
> 

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