[documentation] Hitchhikers guide to Drupal

[Steven Peck]

ok.  I'll try it again.
Every new contributor brings change.
That change is generally beneficial and not always smooth.  
 
If newbie docs go to a different site, then we lose.  
Both the newbie community and the current Drupal community.  
 
The Drupal community reflects it's active members.  Two years and a half years ago, we did not really have a support community.  We had developers who talked to other devs and those who asked good questions (good by targeted) that were asked by people able, capable and interested in looking for the answers.  I have seen new people come in.  Some frustrated for a while, then suddenly, they got it and took off and started pumping in modules.  People were beating me to posting answers.  (This is good, I wanted to work on other things in my spare time and work seriosly picked up).  That was my payback to the community.  I participated in growing this segment of the community and will continue to do so.
 
When I joined, I thought, this is neat.  SO I started answering questions I could or directing people to posts or enough of a trail that they could find the answer.  Overtime I have learned a lot about Drupal despite not learning php.  Drupal is changed because people stayed and worked through the change.  WHo would have thought the php snippets section could happen?  Who would have thought that Drupalsites, or evolt?  or TheOnion?  Three conferences?  Magazine articles?  The fight about the admin section (still ongoing) :)
 
I wrote the best practices because every day people would post about losing their production sites.  The number of posts about lost or screwed up production sites is down to what?  One a month?  Documentation and advertisement of that documentation contributed to that.
 
Did we lose people?  Probably.  Did we gain?  Yes... lots more then we lost.
 
So, what do we want.  We want Drupal to succeed.  We want Drupal to attract more people who contribute.  
 
We have a decent support community, but we need someone to grow the welcoming group for the less technically adept. People willing to supply that documentation, that link to the manual, because if people are asking, then they need to be taught how and where to find resources and those resources need to be located.  We need more documentation.  We have not had people contributing it.  We need it on Drupal.org, not somewhere else on someone's blog.  
 
If we segment the general community, then the new community will grow with misconceptions of the old commnuity becuase it started from a flawed perception.  And NO one will learn from the seperation.  No one will grow from over coming the challanges of bringing in the new members and integrating them.  We will all lose.
 
If you think change is not accomplish without discussion, dissent, strong opinions and a touch of choas, you really need to go back to some of the earlier threads on Drupal.  Hell, look back on human history.
 
Now, how to deal with the dead weight.  Education.  We need links to the Open Source docs on contributing back.  On how development in an open Source project works.  On how Drupal development occurs.  We link these when people 'demand'.  We teach phrasing of requests so those of a similier interest can collaborate and learn enough how to do something together or raise funds for their specific needs.  And be we, I mean all of us.  Write the docs on this.  If you have explained it three or four times, then you have explained it one or two times to much and should add it to the handbook.
 
Frankly, it's hard to seperate the dead weight from the potential contributor.  But we've been doing it for a while, we just needed to do it more smoothly.
 
-sp

________________________________

From: documentation-bounces at drupal.org on behalf of Charlie Lowe
Sent: Thu 1/5/2006 6:35 PM
To: A list for documentation writers
Subject: Re: [documentation] Hitchhikers guide to Drupal



Robert Castelo wrote:
>
> On 5 Jan 2006, at 23:29, Kim P. Werker wrote:
>
>> eventually some folks with popular marketing and "average" end-users
>> in mind are going to splinter off into their own distribution with
>> prettier packaging, slightly smoother edges, and more straightforward,
>> newbie-oriented documentation.
>
>
> If you think that's an itch that needs to be scratched why not scratch
> it on drupal.org?

Well, if I can jump and offer an answer: because we are having this
conversation. I'm becoming more and more convinced that drupal.org is
too developer-focused to accomplish some tasks. A community such as Kim
describes would not have to have this particular conversation because it
would have a different focus, much more end user oriented.

Some of this has to do with who gets to speak and who feels they have a
right to speak. The power--control--of drupal.org is completely in
developers hands. Most major conversations and decision making happens
on the developer list and, apparently, at the few Drupal get togethers
at conferences.

I'm not saying there is necessary anything wrong with this other than a
different community with a different emphasis might more effectively
accomplish what Kim describes just as CivicSpace has their own site and
Bryght their own rather than hosting everything that they do on
drupal.org. This for no other reason than the difference in who would
feel empowered to speak and contribute in such a community.
--
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