[drupal-docs] Drupal vs Mambo

[Liza Sabater]

On Aug 01 2005, at 01:40 PM, Morbus Iff wrote:

> This is just obscene, and makes "social software" so generic that you 
> can justify a reason for *any* piece of software to be labeled as 
> such, just because it's the newest, grandest, and most generic 
> buzzword - the *same* damn way that content management systems were 
> years and years ago.

You know what is obscene? Treating users like their just one more piece 
of data. You want Drupal to be hooked on the vapors of a few 
development geeks when it should be cruising on the elixir of human 
movements : art movements, political movements, youth movements, social 
movements.

I've always called blogging software micro-content managing systems 
but, you know who cares? Only people who are looking at it to more 
easily manage static sites.

I would never sell Drupal for just managing content. Ever. Why drive 
myself up the wall for a brochure site with Drupal when WordPress, 
TextPattern and MovableType can do it 100x easier than? It would be 
insane of my part to try to use Drupal with people who would suffer the 
learning curve needed in order to use the product.

Now, when a blog has gotten too big or a publisher wants to diversify 
their presence by opening up the site to their "constituency" or target 
market, then Drupal/CivicSpace is my CMS of choice. Drupal is social 
software because it handles flawlessly what people need to do online to 
build communities from the inside out.

It is obscene to treat people online like just the sum of words; as if 
this presence somehow is less human than our presence offline. THIS IS 
HUMAN ACTIVITY. And this is also true.

Is it text? Yeah.
Is it data? Yeah.
Can it be considered content? Yeah, sure.

Does that mean it is less human because it is text? No it is not.  
Drupal needs to get past the stage of being just a CMS because, quite 
frankly, it really does not explain its full out-of-the-box potential.

I have contributed some to the rework of Drupal-Docs and it's through 
that work that I have seen how, in thinking more of communities, Drupal 
is showing how this CMS-centric mentality really affected its capacity 
to understand the communities it serves. The Drupal-Docs group, has 
done an amazing job at not taking for granted who is going to read 
what; and moving away from this geek-centric, CMS-centric mentality. I 
mean, just all the work Kieran did was just amazing.

So, with more than just 2 cents, I think the marketing group should 
take a cue of the Drupal-Docs group and not just smack the geekatude 
down, but really open Drupal to new markets, new users and new 
constituencies, without dumbing it down.

I wish I were going to OSCON. Y'all need me there to smack away that 
content-managed-geekatude.

Best,
Liza Sabater
Blog Publisher
culturekitchen network

AIM - cultkitdiva
SKYPE - lizasabater