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

[Tomáš Fülöpp (vacilando.org)]

A very long time ago, in January 2008, I wondered in the General discussion
forum why "I am not receiving any updates on forum threads I participate
in". I genuinely thought something was temporarily not working and I hoped
it would be fixed!
You can still see the responses at http://drupal.org/node/216337 --
generally unhelpful ("Teh subscriptions module is being rewritten", "the few
notification modules were not the most well maintained modules",
"performance impact of the modules in their state") -- and ultimately
closing with killes's disappointing final statement: "This is simply not
implemented."

Since that moment - I am sorry to say - I virtually stopped contributing or
asking questions in the general Drupal forums because I got the impression
that "support" areas like Post installation (http://drupal.org/forum/22) or
General discussion (http://drupal.org/forum/2) are simply black holes for
time and effort. One of the main reason is that there are no e-mail
notifications for thread updates. The other is the huge level of duplication
and poor searchability. When the d.o. redesign finally took place, one of
the main features I was looking for was improvement of these black hole
forums and added notifications. But little has changed in that area.
So, instead, I have always been trying to locate and collaborate on precise
issue threads and in g.d.o. groups and threads, where there tends to be more
focus and the notifications do function.

Still, I feel that the need for less categorizable questions and comments
has been badly missing, so I have very much welcomed the
http://drupal.stackexchange.com/ initiative. It features notifications
(naturally, that's such a simple feature!), even feeds, people can vote on
helpful answers, and there are several safeguards against duplicating
content. Loyal to Drupal as I am, of course it hurts me that using it means
shifting some activity away from the mother d.o. domain to an external
platform. Especially because the same system could easily be done in Drupal!
But sorry, efficiency and general progress of the Drupal project as a whole
is much more important than fighting to keep inefficient forums on the d.o.
domain.**
So I am definitely with rfay and others who put so much good energy in
trying to radically improve the general Drupal support situation.

And as for this dev list - I post extremely rarely out of respect for all
the more experienced people, but I read virtually all posts and try to from
them as much as I can. It is useful to have it because it offers a stream of
unpredictable and therefore potentially inspiring issues. But I can also
imagine simply following the new questions feed at
http://drupal.stackexchange.com/feeds instead!

vacilando
http://twitter.com/vacilandois




On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 12:17, Ronald Ashri <ronald at istos.it> wrote:

> Really like Karen's suggestion - a mailing list is a simple effective
> way to stay in touch that most people can agree with and use.
>
> Let us strictly police it so it does not stray and with respect to
> David's point about contrib vs core discussions I would say let us
> keep it strictly core - in the exact spirit of Core Conversations -
> just like the Snowman likes it :-)
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Karen Stevenson <karen at elderweb.com>
> wrote:
> > I think we badly need a list for high-level strategic discussions. There
> > have been a couple suggestions about just creating a new list that
> clearly
> > has that purpose rather than trying to find a way to get this list back
> to
> > what that was. What about creating a new list called
> 'core-conversations'.
> > No newbie could ever imagine that was a support list and it is very clear
> > what it is for. The core conversations at DrupalCon this year were some
> of
> > the best things about the conference for me and a year-round way of
> having
> > (or at least starting) those conversations would be a great thing for
> > Drupal. We could also use it to propose/discuss the strategic initiatives
> > that Dries wants to use for future development.
> >
> > Karen
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 9:58 PM, Angela Byron <drupal-devel at webchick.net
> >
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> t 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.
> >>
> >
>
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