[documentation] A New Approach to Drupal Tutorials

[Charlie Lowe]

Nick Lewis wrote:
> Here is a really nutty idea. I regularly write drupal tutorials at my 
> blog, and file them under the term "drupal tutorials":
> http://nicklewis.smartcampaigns.com/taxonomy/term/177

I don't think this is nutty at all. I suggested 2 1/2 years ago that we 
think about using Drupal aggregation as a method to push content to a 
site rather than seeing it as a pull technology:

http://cyberdash.com/a-blog-hub-using-drupal-to-create-a-better-community-weblog


> 
> I've been asked a couple of times to publish some of them at drupal.org, 
> but I am a busy and lazy person and haven't really figured out how to do 
> that. I suspect many of my fellows who write drupal tutorials are in 
> similar situations. However, we now have some handy modules like 
> aggregator2 that allow us to take a creative alternative approach:
> 
> Using aggregator2 we could take in feeds from drupal developers who 
> write tutorials (and who give drupal.org permission). 

Permission would (should) be granted by using the CC license that 
drupal.org uses.

> 
> So aggregator2 would feed in new tutorials, and save them as full 
> fledged nodes at drupal.org. We'd probably at first leave the nodes 
> unpublished as a distinct node type in the submission queue. When a new 
> tutorial pops up, all documentation people would have to do is review 
> it, and file under whatever appropriate taxonomy term they choose. The 
> end result could be a properly reviewed, organized library of articles 
> that is created with minimal effort on the part of documentation 
> writers, and minimal barriers for the writers of tutorials. This seems 
> to be a win-win that could greatly increase the amount of quality 
> content on drupal.org while reducing the amount of work the docs team 
> has to do.

I don't believe the submission queue is necessary. Those who are pushing 
content to Drupal could (should) supply the appropriate taxonomy terms 
on their own. Once it is on drupal.org, documentation maintainers could 
choose to add tutorials into the book outline.