[documentation] New handbook section proposal: "Community Initiatives"

[Angela Byron]

On 20-Jan-09, at 11:35 PM, Angela Byron wrote:

> Drupal core development involves the coordination of literally
> thousands of open issues, hundreds of contributors, and dozens of
> initiatives. It's been challenging to coordinate all of this, so I'm
> constantly on the hunt for ways to streamline the process. I'm sure
> the docs team can relate. ;)
>
> Tonight we were kicking around ideas about how to handle this
> situation and (with Addi's permission) created a new top-level
> handbook called "Community Initiatives": http://drupal.org/node/ 
> 361842.
>
> The idea is that major efforts in the community (Drupal core,
> documentation, d.o redesign, etc. ) could create a series of sub-pages
> that explain to people who want to jump in where to do so. See (and
> sub-pages) http://drupal.org/node/361846 as an example of what I mean.
>
> Addi asked me to post here to get thoughts/impressions. So. Thoughts?
> Impressions? ;)

Thanks a lot for the feedback, folks!

1. I deliberately named this "Community Initiatives" and not  
"Developer Initiatives" or similar because I definitely *do* want this  
to be for organizing *any* kind of wide-spread community effort going  
on, from documentation to graphic design to usability to fundraising  
or whatever. I merely filled out the Drupal core part as an example  
(and I see Gábor is already filling out the d.o upgrade stuff --  
awesome!)

2. I'm totally cool with putting this under the "Getting Involved"  
guide, and in fact think it could fill a nice niche there. Currently,  
Getting Involved gives you all of the higher level skills you need in  
order to be a proficient coder, translator, documentation contributor,  
etc. But what it lacks is a cohesive "Here's where you can jump in"  
list. IMO, Community Initiatives could be that list. I didn't re- 
parent the book because I am not sure where weight-wise it would make  
sense under Getting Involved, but am totally cool w/ it being put in  
there if people think that'd be good.

3. I actually vastly prefer a book-based solution over some sort of  
Views-powered solution because there would be absolutely no way to  
build a page like http://drupal.org/node/362152 with Views. You get  
finite control over the task list hierarchy, how much description you  
give to people, etc. Anyone can edit it. It's also easy to organize  
efforts into a hierarchical structure and get a "table of contents" of  
sorts as you click in. To me, book.module is an ideal solution for  
this and on Drupal.org, that means making it part of the handbook.

-Angie