[development] #drupal and #drupal-contribute split (Was: Re: Proposal: Move all dev support off this list to new StackExchange site)

[William Smith]

I dunno .. I've been around since about Drupal 4.6.  Have some modules
behind my back, but most of what I do, I do for clients and it ends there.
I used to run support on the forums, but in the end, the forums just seemed
dead.  I haven't been on IRC for a long while, though I used to hang out
there, both in #drupal and #drupal-support.  My Drupal blog is all but dead,
though I still read planet.drupal.org regularly (daily).  I never got into
the groove of the Groups thing.  Not even sure where to look and it doesn't
just 'come to me' the way that mailing lists do.

I'm on all the mailing lists, and I read - everything - even if I don't
always reply.  I try to hit support questions, as I can.  I don't handle
support on the forums anymore, as I find the forums relatively barren and
uninteresting and just don't visit.   I'd certainly hate for them to go
away, although they certainly have changed shape and scope over the years.
As has all of the communication venues.

Lists put something in my inbox.  When I have the time, I read them.  I like
that.  Topics that I might not have sought out just magically come to me.

The development list is *nothing* like it used to be.  But it is still
something.  I'd hate for it to go away.  How else am I expected to know what
you a**holes are on about? ;)

On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 11:26 PM, Charles Mattice <
admin at authentic-empowerment.net> wrote:

>  personally, if you move everything online such as a drupal "facebook" it
> might help, then again it could blow up in drupals face. Yeah, it would be
> great to have a place where we could go and get relevant information.
>
> I started with drupal around ver 4.5 with the civicspace version, I had
> looked at drupal earlier but at that time was a infant with portals and
> php-nuke was the best thing out there for quickly getting a site up. Nuke
> went through the same thing drupal is experiening, rapid growth, developer
> burn out, the consumers, and then the arrogance of what we at drupal call
> ""core developers"".  Got to say drupal's ""core developers"" are not nearly
> as bad and this issue is nothing more than a growth spurt.
>
> In my early days people were more open, if you had a question it was
> generally answered fairly quickly. It may not be what you wanted to here but
> you were directed to a resource that did in fact have a solution. Since then
> the whole drupal project, including contrib, has skyrocketed. Instead of a
> few hundred modules there are a few thousand. Yet at the same time the ratio
> of new developers to lets say core developers for lack of a better phrase
> has not even come close to matching  that of the skyrocketing community.
>
> I would say one of the reason for this has to deal with the response, or
> lack of response, to these lists. For instance, in working on the 6.x to 7.x
> update functions, if I would post something I could almost guarantee who
> would review it. Typically sun or catch and maybe chx or damz, and yes I
> learned alot for working with it and the comments I received. but there were
> other times as well when I would post something and get totally shot out of
> my seat as I was a bother and didn't know what the f*uck I was talking about
> and didn't understand. Of course these responses usually came from names I
> did not recognize but all in all is this the reputation we want for drupal.
> A couple of times I came close to saying screw it do it your self.
>
>  Do I have any commits? NO!, Did I contribute? YES!, Was it worth it? YES
> and why? I might have been able to contribute back to a community that I
> have benefited from. Drupal is unique in that anyone can be a ""core
> developer"", yes there is structure there has to be and for any community to
> thrive it must be structured accordingly. Success comes from the top down in
> business or in a community the leaders down. Their impact on the success (or
> failure) depends on their involvement and how they interact with people.
>
> Now getting back to a facebook drupal and possibly subsites. This could be
> a good thing to distribute the load, but there still needs to be this list
> and others so we, who have precious few minutes to contribute may prefer to
> use. I believe at one time this was brought up (civicspace days) and a bunch
> of drupal information sites started to crop up, then came the tug of wars on
> who had the better information and drupal.org itself started to suffer
> with the newer information lacking behind. hence whether official of not, it
> was decided that it should be drupal.org that was the main source for
> information. I think this was right before Dries legally took ownership of
> the drupal copyright.
>
> If drupal becomes another "Facebook", how soon will it be before the same
> issues crop up, ie; can't find what your looking for , can't get a decent
> support response, blah, blah, blah.... How soon will "Drupal Facebook"
> become "Drupal MySpace"
>
> If subsites crop up to help with the load, whose going to be the main
> repository, drupal or the subsite if that's where everyone starts to go.
> Social networking is great for some, but I have seen many sites come and go.
> In the end it all boils down to the individual, what they want, how they
> learn, and whether they are willing to give back to the community, even if
> its only to say "Hey you might want to give drupal a shot."
>
> As someone once said "everything matters", how we deal with "everything"
> will eventually determine the outcome of drupal and whether our community
> thrives.
>
>
>
>
> On 3/19/2011 9:34 PM, Randy Fay wrote:
>
> I agree that drupal.org becoming "facebook", where both real-time and
> support interactions would be welcome and managed well would be fantastic.
>
> And we could do that with subsites that don't need such careful
> supervision.
>
> Why couldn't we let members of the community launch subsites like
> support.drupal.org and make of them what they could? Or launch a chat site
> specifically for support that had far more sophisticated features than IRC?
>
> IMO this is good thinking.
>
> -Randy
>
>
>
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