Why was this group approved? IMO, it's clearly a key part of http://groups.drupal.org/los-angeles -- for which a taxonomy term exists: http://groups.drupal.org/taxonomy/term/20693.

As it stands, it feels like spam. all of the posts already exist in the LA group and are of obvious value to LA Group members

CommentFileSizeAuthor
#57 la_group.png237.14 KBezra-g
Support from Acquia helps fund testing for Drupal Acquia logo

Comments

silverwing’s picture

Moderation report for this groups shows it was originally the "Lithuanian Drupal translation" http://groups.drupal.org/node/2520/modr8 There's no other revision info for the group node.

The earliest node listed was modified by christefano on March 15, 2012. http://groups.drupal.org/node/2880/revisions

I can't see how it was approved, and seems like an abuse of power.

christefano’s picture

Status: Active » Fixed

This is a subgroup, not spam. We feel that it's time to split the LA Drupal group into manageable subgroups. LA Drupal already has another subgroup, for example, at http://groups.drupal.org/santa-clarita-valley

Our neighbors in the San Diego group did the same thing last year and I don't see a problem with this approach.

   http://groups.drupal.org/san-diego
   http://groups.drupal.org/north-county-san-diego-dug

greggles’s picture

@christefano can you explain the origin of this node and why it appears to be Lithuanian Drupal Translation group? I don't see any revisions on the group node and the default is that groups have revisions enabled.

greggles’s picture

Status: Fixed » Active

We feel that it's time to split the LA Drupal group into manageable subgroups.

Perhaps a related relevant question is who is the "we" in this sentence?

Also, I don't see how this is "fixed."

jromine’s picture

Status: Active » Fixed

There's been no discussion in http://groups.drupal.org/la about splitting the group.

Earlier this week we added several new group admins, in part to build a diverse team that represents the entire community.

jromine’s picture

Status: Fixed » Active

Sorry, somehow status changed to "fixed" by mistake when I posted.

BTMash’s picture

As a note, I'm the site admin for the santa clarita valley group. That group was created due to the hostile nature of everything that went down last summer. Moreover, I'd explained to my group (and to LA) that if Santa Clarita was to be brought into discussion as a splinter group (which it is not), then we are better of disbanding that group and just being part of the larger LA group. We had agreed on that (my local community was fine with it). So, either do not bring Santa Clarita Valley into discussion or remove the group from OG. I am fine with either of those decisions for Santa Clarita Valley.

greggles’s picture

So, I looked in a database backup of the site from January 2011 and here's what I found.

At that time:
The 2520 group node was for the lithuanian translation of Drupal.
The group is authored by http://groups.drupal.org/user/4581
The group only had two posts, one of which was about shutting it down.
The group had 3 revisions that are now gone and replaced with a single revision about Downtown LA created by Christefano.

christefano’s picture

#3: The group was marked for deletion in 2009 at http://groups.drupal.org/node/21762 but it was never deleted. I asked Rimantas if I could take over the group and run with it and didn't hear back. I'm not surprised considering that he posted just once.

#4: "We" are the organizers of the Downtown LA group. We've had dozens of events at Oversee.net, Droplabs and the Spring Arts Tower since 2010.

#5: The concept of new or sub groups was discussed in person at the LA Drupal Governance meetup, at http://groups.drupal.org/node/128909#comment-419839 and in great detail at http://groups.drupal.org/node/112639#comment-413829

#7: Fair enough. There are two other groups that illustrate the point of subgroups, however, at http://groups.drupal.org/high-desert-california and http://groups.drupal.org/antelope-valley-bakersfield

greggles’s picture

Aside from tweaking the name or changing a group to include more or less focus than previously I don't think I've seen a change quite this dramatic in the purpose of a group. I am having a hard time understand why it made sense to rename a Lithuanian group to an LA group other than to avoid the community review process. Can you provide some insight on that?

christefano’s picture

Title: Downtown Los Angeles group » Lithuanian Drupal translation and Downtown Los Angeles group

It was late and probably not the best approach. The Lithuanian translation group was beyond abandoned and didn't seem to fit the criteria at http://groups.drupal.org/node/39596, and the idea was to take something that was useless and make it useful.

We (the organizers of the Downtown LA Drupal group) have since talked about it and we're okay with the group being put in the moderation queue for the webmaster team to approve.

christefano’s picture

This issue appears to have two different conversations going on: how the group was approved and whether it should be approved. I hope my response in #11 provided an answer to the former. As far as the latter goes, this part of #5 continues to confuse me:

Earlier this week we added several new group admins, in part to build a diverse team that represents the entire community.

I don't see the facts to back this up. None of the LA Drupal group admins are organizing events anywhere in or near Downtown Los Angeles. Attending and volunteering at a meetup is certainly appreciated (and always acknowleged), but saying that they represent the community in that area is innacurate.

mike stewart’s picture

Can we disable the group until this issue is resolved? The group didn't follow normal guidelines for community review and approval.

Apparently since the group wasn't explicitly disabled, @christefano took that as a signal it's ok to proceed. Sometime since all this came out, he has since added another admin to the group (Sknight17) and mass emailed members from ladrupal.org. How he obtained and then used the email list to mass mail is another HUGE question in itself, IMO.

This is a copy of the email, notice the language which also makes it look like it came from gdo:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: christo_AT_ladrupal_DOT_org
Date: Mar 18, 2012 8:06 PM
Subject: Invitation to join the group 'Downtown Los Angeles Drupal' at Drupal Groups
To: ladrupal_membr_email

Hi. I'm a member of 'Downtown Los Angeles Drupal' and I welcome you to join this group as well. Please see the link and message below.

Downtown Los Angeles Drupal
The Downtown Los Angeles Drupal group has a growing userbase and meets in and around Downtown Los Angeles.
Subscribe: http://groups.drupal.org/og/subscribe/2520
Hi there,

Downtown Los Angeles is one of the most active, fastest-growing areas for Drupal in LA County and a few of us have started a hyperlocal group to better serve the Downtown area. Please check it out and join the group if you'd like. You can visit the group without joining, of course, at http://groups.drupal.org/downtown-los-angeles

By being a member of this group, you'll receive emails about events, jobs and discussions that are more specific to Los Angeles proper and the Downtown area. (If you're already a member of the LA Drupal umbrella group, you're "drinking from the firehose" and are receiving these already. Joining the Downtown Los Angeles group is unlikely to result in receiving more email.)

We're also looking for volunteers to help us moderate the group, report spam, etc., so just reply to this email if you're interested. Thanks!

~ Christefano

Christefano Reyes | Droplabs.net | Founder and Lead Burrito Analyst
NNN-CHRISTO (NNN-NNN-NNNN) | NNN-DROPLABS (NNN-NNN-NNNN)
Collaborative Coworking and Hackerspace in Downtown Los Angeles
linktotwitter/Droplabs | linktomeetupdotcom/Droplabs

ps. This message will be sent to you just this once. You're receiving it because you RSVPd or signed in an event in or near Downtown Los Angeles in the past.

*-Note: I've modified personally identifiable information other than the email address from which this was sent.

greggles’s picture

Status: Active » Fixed

As has been discussed, there was a proposal to delete this group node in 2009 so I followed through with that proposal. I redirected the two urls in that email to this issue so we don't just send people to 404s. I'm open to proposals on a better place to send them.

This issue seems pretty fixed to me from the perspective of g.d.o.

Edited to fix missing " in the link which made it broken.

christefano’s picture

Status: Fixed » Active

#14: Please remove that redirect so that this group can be created at that URL again. I've already submitted the group for approval.

#13: in case you were not aware, that invitation message was sent from groups.drupal.org using OG's "Invite" feature and it was sent to those who'd expressly signed up for events in and near Downtown Los Angeles. Any member of any group can do this and there's nothing wrong or insidious with it.

Chris Charlton’s picture

Status: Fixed » Active

To be clear about downtown meetups being organized: the 2010-2011 downtown meetups at Oversee.net were co-led by myself, Rain B., Mike Stewart, Pete B., Oliver S., Miguel Hernandez, and Christefano, at the very least. Others helped too, of course. I was a full-time employee at Oversee.net, so I feel Christefano saying none of the other organizers were involved is disingenuous; we would even hold our monthly management meetings prior to each meetup.

Also, LA Drupal is home to many meetups and sub-groups - Burbank, Glendale, Long Beach, Downtown, West Side, East L.A., Pasadena, and so on. All the sub-groups make up Los Angeles, so I would like to -1 (vote down) this request of splintering the groups on GDO. The High Desert, Santa Barbara, Orange County, and other neighboring groups are literally in other counties so their own GDO groups make sense. Trying to claim the center of our county (Downtown) should be it's own group is just ludicrous. (LA County is not shaped like a doughnut)

At this time LA Drupal is refining our layout & usage of GDO to help our 1,000+ community members connect and easily find all of our events. We even have a dedicated tab to events throughout L.A. County, clearly showing all sub-groups and their events make up the larger LA Drupal umbrella. I may be wrong, but it seems someone (Christefano?) changed the page trying to categorize the Downtown L.A. group as a "nearby group" (also ludicrous) and updated it's URL to point to the recently hijacked Lithuania group.

This needs to stop. Thank you.

UPDATE: Added the names of missing community members who also helped with the Downtown meetups.

christefano’s picture

Status: Active » Fixed

#16 is missing the names of several other organizers who actually ran those meetups, including Pete, Oliver, and most importantly Miguel Hernandez, who has organized events in the Downtown area for years and secured the venue at Oversee with me before they hired Chris Charlton to work there.

Taking credit of other people's work and cutting others out of the collective record is a frequent pattern that I'm tired of seeing. This is one of the reasons why a separate Downtown group entity needs to exist on groups.drupal.org. There aren't any organizers in the Downtown area who are co-moderators of the LA Drupal group, and as it is now we simply need our own group entity so that we can adequately promote our events, build out our group pages, edit each others event announcements (to fix typos, update meetup agendas, etc), and so on.

groups.drupal.org exists in part to enable individuals to organize and attend events and build community. It's not lost on us Downtown that the "O" in "OG" stands for organic and we believe that there should be more groups with their own governance and way of doing things.

With all that being said, I talked with greggles at DrupalCon about the issue of the redirect. If and when the Downtown group is out of the moderation queue, the redirect will no longer be necessary. Until then, I'm okay with it redirecting here so that there aren't any 404s. Marking as fixed.

christefano’s picture

Status: Active » Fixed

#16: Thanks for updating your list of organizers with the names I mentioned.

If you'd like, you can edit your comment again and add Paul and Stewart, our venue coordinator and Drupal After Dark coordinator, respectively. You can also add John for his help with recording and uploading videos.

jstoller’s picture

As a community member who has regularly attended meetings at multiple Westside and Downtown venues for several years now, participated in all LA camps during that time and participated in several of the discussions about LA Drupal governance, I am saddened by this latest development.

It is my opinion that a separate Downtown LA group will serve only to fracture and confuse our community. While I'm assuming the motivations behind this are pure, I feel the end result is divisive and I see no compelling need for this groups existence as a separate entity.

I agree that event co-organizers should be able to edit an event node, but that is a technical problem deserving a technical solution and is certainly possible without those organizers being OG group admins (Drupal's pretty cool like that). I fully support and encourage the addition of this feature to GDO, but the lack of that feature does not make for an adequate justification for splintering LA Drupal.

I feel strongly that splintering off Downtown LA would ultimately only weaken both the Downtown community and the broader Los Angeles community. I humbly suggest that the request for a Downtown LA group be withdrawn, and instead that we work on finding a more collaborative solution to any problems we have.

-1 :-(

christefano’s picture

The unfortunate truth is that the LA Drupal group has already become divided, both in terms of governance and geography. The geographical division alone should be enough to grant a new group that adequately represents the Downtown Los Angeles area. The Downtown Los Angeles group has many organizers (6 of whom are currently listed as admins) who are actively organizing events and building up the community in the area.

If these organizers were added as organizers to the LA Drupal group — or even knew what the secret rite of initiation happened to be in order to be considered for this — that would only address the issue of these individuals being technically capable of promoting Drupal by updating agendas on event announcements, creating OG Vocab terms, using OG Panels, using OG broadcast, and so on.

There are personal and political issues preventing a number of organizers in the larger Los Angeles area from being able to work together at this time. I think we all look forward to a time when this is no longer the case. Withdrawing the request for a Downtown Los Angeles group will not magically resolve these issues, however. To the contrary, it will hobble the Downtown Los Angeles organizers from being able to effectively organize in their area.

jstoller’s picture

Given the distances that people have shown a willingness to drive, in order to attend meetings, I do not see a significant geographical division here. It's LA. 20-30 minutes on the road is trivial. When I go to the Downtown events, few of the participants actually live in Downtown. Everyone is coming from somewhere else. I myself work near Downtown but live on the Westside and it all feels like one big piece of concrete to me.

I also have seen no problems preventing Downtown events from being adequately promoted. Speaking from personal experience, I always know when there is a Downtown event. If I don't attend, it's because of a scheduling conflict. Not due to any lack of information. In fact, I have always seen the joint promotion of all LA events as a strength which benefits all LA events. As I've said before, I agree that there are currently some technical limitations on GDO that make things less than ideal for event co-organizers. But lucky for us, we're a group of web developers, so none of that seems insurmountable. Lets just fix the technology.

What I see is that there are personal issues preventing a very, very small number of local organizers from working together (mostly two, with a little spillover). This is unfortunate and I would very much like to see it remedied, but this is not the way. Whether intentional or not, splintering off a Downtown LA group effectively takes a limited personal conflict and extends it to the entire community. It turns a small personal issue into a big, messy, polarizing political issue. Like it or not, that is the end result. It is destructive to the broader community and will only further inflame the personal conflict which triggered these actions. Any individual benefits that might be gained by this move are far outweighed by the potential harm to the group.

So, if the goal is to create a strong, vibrant Drupal community in the area then—as a member of that community—I firmly believe a splinter group is anti-productive on all levels.

christefano’s picture

Living in Downtown Los Angeles is not a requirement for organizing or attending events in the area. I'm not sure what that has to do with much, if anything.

I'm also having a difficult time understanding how a separate group that represents the region harms the larger community. Forcing organizers to work together under one umbrella group without having a working governance model is crazy and that's what's harming the larger community.

greggles’s picture

I'm also having a difficult time understanding how a separate group that represents the region harms the larger community.

According to this post

Having two groups that serve the same purpose or geographical area can create more work for the organizers in each group and is confusing to new members.

christefano’s picture

We discussed this in #drupal-groups on IRC on Tuesday. Here's an unedited transcript:

    greggles: "Having two groups that serve the same purpose or geographical area can create more work for the organizers in each group and is confusing to new members."
  
    MediaDoneRight: that is what I was trying to say earlier ... as a disservice to new members in particular
  
    christefano: greggles: those two groups were nearly identically named. also, South Bay California is confused with South Bay, Los Angeles and South Bay, San Francisco
  
    pinglaura: greggles: I will say this: It's not a universal truth. If group dynamics have made it unpleasant for a subset of that group to organize, then another group may be beneficial. It's something that might open new paths in NYC, for example.
  
    greggles: yeah
  
    christefano: greggles: fortunately, that issue was taken care of. it was quite a mess. I'd like to think that I was able to effectively reduce confusion there
    
    MediaDoneRight: pinglaura, but also take into account the reality of a single personality being the major cause creating a new group simply rewards bad behavior
  
     greggles: christefano: the names of those two groups ("silicon valley user group" and "south bay california") seem much more distinct than "los angeles" vs. "downtown los angeles"
  
    pinglaura: MediaDoneRight: Actually, in favor of the group I've heard that it brings regionally located organizers into the administration of the group. Only the argument against has been about a single personality, which we've agreed is a separate issue.
  
    christefano: greggles: one of the admins of those groups renamed South Bay California to Silicon Valley Drupal Group
  
    greggles: right
  
    christefano: greggles: also, there are two South Bay areas in California, so it was confusing earlier, too
  
    greggles: but your comment that it causes confusion for new users is from when their names had zero words in common compared to LA vs DLA which have significant overlap in words involved and geographic boundaries
  
    christefano: greggles: it's not just about common words, it's about two groups that are totally inactive on gdo that purport to serve the exact same region
  
    pinglaura: Of course, a geo search would alleviate confusion ;)
  
    christefano: greggles: should the LA Drupal group be renamed to "Greater LA Area" or "Everywhere in metropolitan Los Angeles but Downtown, Northwest Los Angeles, San Gabriel Valley and the Eastside"? 
  
    greggles: ha
  
    christefano: greggles: my point is that these two groups (LA Drupal and Downtown Los Angeles) serve different areas by different people

edit: Sorry, it's an excerpt and not a transcript. The full transcript that I have is 233k.

christefano’s picture

To clarify this part of my comment at #22:

I'm also having a difficult time understanding how a separate group that represents the region harms the larger community.

What I meant to say is that I'm having a difficult time understanding how a separate group that actually represents the Downtown Los Angeles region harms the larger community.

BTMash’s picture

I'm not for or against the creation of the group (I'm far too close to the situation to be able to answer in any unbiased way), but is there a reason a transcript is being displayed? I haven't seen any sort of request from the others in the issue to include a transcript and it certainly displays a lack of respect if you are putting up the transcript of the conversation without their prior consent (which is different from issues/content from GDO which has been posted very publicly). I'm bringing this up because this same issue occurred in http://groups.drupal.org/node/168479#comment-561914 with a reply to posting the transcript in http://groups.drupal.org/node/168479#comment-561929

jstoller’s picture

@christefano, Downtown LA is hardly a region. It is a smallish section of town, within the greater Los Angeles region, which happens to have some convenient meeting locations and people organizing meetings there. @greggles is right. I already find the concept of a Downtown group confusing and I've been around for awhile. In my opinion, it does not need, nor should it have, separate representation on GDO.

Forcing organizers to work together under one umbrella group without having a working governance model is crazy and that's what's harming the larger community.

I disagree with this premise. I fully acknowledge that the governance of LA Drupal—like most of the Drupal community—is extremely informal. I myself have suggested, and would support the establishment of, a somewhat more structured governance model in Los Angeles, partly to prevent this sort of conflict. But that is all for a separate discussion. So, well LA Drupal governance could work better, given the sheer number and quality of events held in LA, I do not think we can fairly say it isn't working.

Furthermore, I think "forcing organizers to work together under one umbrella group" is absolutely necessary to prevent the community from being harmed. That's what community is! Your assertion that this causes harm seems misplaced. On the contrary, what I see as harmful would be breaking off a piece of the group because an individual organizer wishes to sidestep the current community structure (flawed as it may be), due to a personal conflict. As I said before, this has the effect of dragging the entire region into said personal conflict. And I know this to be true, because I am sitting here on a Saturday, compelled to write this stupid post, in an attempt to prevent an impending train wreck. I don't enjoy being placed in this position. I have the utmost respect and appreciation for all the LA organizers, Downtown included, but this has gotten ridiculous and continuing to push in this direction will only lead to bad things.

By way of analogy, you don't fork Core. If you see something you think could work better, file a patch. Let the community take a look and if they like it, it will eventually be committed. But if they don't commit it the way you want, that's still no reason to fork Core. Doing so might give you personally some short-term benefits, but it ultimately harms the community and is bad for the future of both projects. I'd like to see Downtown LA stay in contrib and work with the Core we have.

christefano’s picture

jstoller, what are the "bad things" that having a new group will lead to?

If you're saying that it's the advocating for a new group that's harming the larger community, I'll agree that this thread probably isn't helping. Speaking for myself, it's distracting me from focusing on this Tuesday's High Performance Drupal meetup (we're featuring a case study on GRAMMY.com — hope to see you there!) and rolling a new release for Shared Email.

Meanwhile, back to the advocating…

By way of analogy, you don't fork Core. If you see something you think could work better, file a patch. Let the community take a look and if they like it, it will eventually be committed. But if they don't commit it the way you want, that's still no reason to fork Core.

How does creating a fork or derivative like Pressflow fit into this analogy? How did Pressflow harm the Drupal software or community? In the case of Pressflow, many of its features and performance improvements were included later in Drupal, which is a success story if I've ever heard one.

The main difference that I see between GPL software such as Pressflow and local community organizing is that there are clear procedures for contributing back to Drupal while there are none for LA Drupal (other than precedence and personal preference). In addition, the maintainers of Drupal, Drupal.org and Pressflow had and continue to have similar goals and good communication, as where many of the organizers in and around Los Angeles do not.

Another difference is that the Pressflow maintainers had the tools and the freedom to use them for developing and promoting Pressflow. The Downtown organizers still need the tools and and the freedom to use them, and without them we are unable to effectively develop our community and promote Drupal in our area.

Let's say that we want to send an announcement of a new Downtown event to people who explicitly signed up or attended a previous Downtown meetup. The San Francisco group regularly uses OG Broadcast to send announcements like this. We'd like to have the same opportunity. Do we need to ask permission? The tone in comment #13 in this thread seems to suggest that we do.

The trust and respect between several of the organizers (it is not "mostly two, with a little spillover" as you said in comment #21) in the larger Los Angeles area is either strained or broken and the impending train wreck has already happened.

oseldman’s picture

I'd been resisting adding anything to this post, partially because it was marked as fixed, but it seems the conversation is still going on here so….

Like jstoller, and for all his reasons, I am also saddened by this development. My overall preference is to see a single group where all the organizers in the region are credited as such and have the appropriate access to work together to grow the community by using g.d.o to its full capabilities.

I'd also like to see an improved model for governance that provides clear definitions of the roles and responsibilities of our group organizers and an open/public system for inclusion (and removal). As it stands, over the last year or so, organizers ("managers") have been added, removed and added again without any external discussion. This leaves the impression that there's a small group of people making behind-the-scenes decisions. In a large group, with many interests and regions, I believe this approach is unacceptable and unsustainable.

Regardless of my preferences for how the current group should be run, I believe that any group, Downtown LA or otherwise, should have the right to exist if its members feel their needs are not being met through existing methods/groups. So long as the basic group creation guidelines are met, a group of people wanting to organize themselves should be supported.

Given the current technical limitations of g.d.o (and the apparent personal issues), I'd say a new group even falls within the stated, "Don't overlap much with an existing group. We want fewer big groups given a choice. Groups can split apart organically after some time." If this is an attempt to mitigate some of the group disharmony, then it should be supported. However, a new group will probably make the underlying personal conflict more visible to the broader community.

Groups can be merged if they are no longer necessary or appropriate. Posts can be cross-posted. Confusion can be explained and dispelled. This is already true whether there are multiple groups or not.

Also, as a side note, I'd like to suggest a moratorium on name-calling. If we're really working together in the name of our larger community, there should be no place for personal attacks.

BTMash’s picture

As a note and speaking for myself, @christefano, I have attended many downtown meetups (not to mention presented countless times and even prepared a presentation at the last minute when a primary presenter was unable to make it). Yet I received no invite to join the group; I did take offense to this. And my request for respect which has come in up in the issue queue / email has often gone by the wayside. So when behaviour like this has happened to me multiple times (be it intentionally or unintentionally), its very difficult to not take things personally.

So, now is my try to step out of taking things less personally and try to be more professional. I hope this takes the edge off an increasingly stressful situation (please understand that this is purely meant as a joke).

If possible, a larger group that takes advantage of tagging (and to have the 'all organizers can modify events they are part of' would be awesome) would be better. Its should be easier for a person since they are looking at one group as opposed to over 10 (LA County consists of well over 80 cities - imagine joining each group!). People can use rss to 'subscribe' to events being held in their area. Also, I **think** current GDO has a limit on the number of groups a post can be attributed to so this could make it problematic.

But...with that said, I personally don't think a singular group is all that necessary given that folks that subscribe/unsubcribe from postings for different groups. Hence the nature of things growing organically (be it they shrink and split or merge and grow). If all parties are willing to work with and respect each other's space, a split can still work well (doesn't this sound similar to other such events that happen in real life?). Does it mean its a bit confusing for the participants that they need to join multiple groups? Yes, for some time. But then again, we all join groups we're interested in or can attend (I'm a member here and a member of Toronto since I used to live there but I am not a member of Bay Area since I cannot make the meetups due to the drive involved). More importantly, if we show we're willing to work with each other (and not show so much hostility), then I don't think members will mind.

On GDO itself, we see groups such as DC / Brazil / Florida / India which amass either large memberships or large areas of land (or both) and we also see groups such as South India (shared name/space), Maharastra (an Indian State) and a part of it, Pune (a city within Maharastra). Both approaches seem to be a part of the community. The biggest thing they share, however, is cooperation.

If it is not apparent, I am +0. Both scenarios involve respect for each other when working professionally.

laura s’s picture

Title: Lithuanian Drupal translation and Downtown Los Angeles group » Approve Downtown Los Angeles group
Status: Fixed » Needs review

Reopening and renaming this ticket because it has become about the Downtown LA group. The question is whether to approve the group on groups.drupal.org.

Regardless of my preferences for how the current group should be run, I believe that any group, Downtown LA or otherwise, should have the right to exist if its members feel their needs are not being met through existing methods/groups. So long as the basic group creation guidelines are met, a group of people wanting to organize themselves should be supported.

I'm inclined to agree with this. What emerged from the discussion last week on IRC, from what I could gather, is that the main objections to the proposed group revolve around personality conflicts, which really is a separate matter. (If a d.o member is behaving inappropriately or abusing privileges, that should be taken up in its own issue.)

When large groups start to get bound up in personal and/or political conflicts to the point where groups of people are feeling excluded or hindered, allowing formation of alternative groups seems to be a way to allow and encourage Drupal collaboration to happen in ways the current group does not serve. LA is not the only group facing these kinds of conflicts.

The geography of LA also begs the question as to whether it really is one community. When I lived in Venice and Marina del Rey, it was an hour proposition to go downtown or to the Valley, or Hollywood for that matter. From where I am now in Boulder, an hour's drive gets me easily to Fort Collins, which has its own g.d.o group. When I lived in NYC, Manhattan was a different world from Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx. Staten Island was another country.

On g.d.o we're taking small steps towards affording more opportunities for groups of people to form Groups. See http://groups.drupal.org/node/219754 for an example relating to college and university groups, which obviously overlap existing geographies. We had been rejecting these group proposals. Now we're planning to approve them. Why? Because organically there are communities on campuses that, like it or not, do not really engage in the greater municipal activities. We want Drupal to catch on in more colleges, and letting these groups form seems like a no-brainer.

Here's the equation I come up with:

"I want to do X" > "I don't want you to do X"
and
"I don't want you to do X to me" > "I want to do X"

The question is does approving the g.d.o group for downtown LA do harm to users not participating in it? I think not. I am not convinced that overlapping groups are damaging. The arguments posted here about hardships that would be caused by such a group I don't find compelling. The most tangible cost I can see is that it takes more work for organizers to organize ... but when it comes to posting events, that's just a matter of a multiselect field on the node/add form. And if people aren't involved in the new group, I don't see how the new group adds any hardship. As for end users, they can pick and choose the groups in which they want to participate, and return to meetups they like and avoid the meetups they don't find helpful or enjoyable. A little friendly cross-linking between groups would greatly help the members.

I am inclined to approve this group.

greggles’s picture

I'd be more inclined to approve this if the folks interested in creating confusion in group names were to work on http://groups.drupal.org/node/70433

As it is I think we should follow christefano's own advice from January 28th and reduce confusing overlapping groups.

re comment #24 I didn't continue refuting the arguments christefano put forward in irc, but I'm definitely not swayed by them.

christefano’s picture

Sure, I'm interested in working on http://groups.drupal.org/node/70433

Meanwhile, are you saying the two group names have overlapping words (i.e. "Los Angeles") and that's what is confusing? If that's the case, I have two questions:

  1. Who is confused by this?
  2. Of the two groups being discussed, which group name is more accurate?

Of the two, the Downtown Los Angeles group is named properly. There's no clear geographical definition of what "LA" is and in my opinion the "LA Drupal (Los Angeles Drupal)" group should be renamed to "Los Angeles County" or "Greater Los Angeles Area" to be more accurate. That's a different discussion (and a different issue for the issue queue or forum topic on groups.drupal.org) and I don't have much interest in starting that thread.

If having similar words in the names is an issue, then the "LA Drupal (Los Angeles Drupal)" group is effectively namesquatting and preventing the Downtown Los Angeles group from being approved.

oseldman’s picture

@greggles RE:#32 I've read the conversation at http://groups.drupal.org/node/70433 and am not sure how to help work on it. While I'm not interested in "creating confusion in group names", I would like to help move the process forward for loosening up the group acceptance policy. The original issue of the "Drupal Parents" group interested me, both as a parent and because of the difficulties and inconsistencies it exposed in the group approval process.

Other than +1ing some comments and adding a note or two, can you explain how I (we) could help? There hasn't been any activity on that node since June 2010, and it's not really clear what needs work.

sreynen’s picture

Status: Needs review » Postponed

Good question, oseldman. You (or anyone) could start by creating an issue for each of the tasks in that list and incorporating the feedback from the discussion thread into an implementation plan. Many of the tasks are already clearly defined plan, but some still need more planning. For those that have clear plans, I think it's worth beginning this work in Drupal 7, where groups.drupal.org will begin moving shortly.

Until we have better evaluation tools, I'm not inclined to approve nor decline this group. How does leaving it as postponed pending better data sound?

christefano’s picture

Status: Postponed » Needs review

We have a group of people in a regional area who want to organize events. Beyond this, I'm not sure what data or evaluation tools are necessary.

Not being inclined to approve or deny the group is more of an abstention or +0 and isn't enough cause for postponing this issue. I see postponing this issue as having the same effect as letting it languish in the moderation queue (or worse, denying the group), and I'm reopening this.

Please approve this group. The Downtown Los Angeles group fulfills all the guidelines for being approved, including:

Don't overlap much with an existing group. We want fewer big groups given a choice. Groups can split apart organically after some time.

#32: I've read http://groups.drupal.org/node/70433 and for good measure I read it again. Finding a technical solution to a political problem is an interesting challenge, but in my opinion that discussion falls outside the scope of this issue and there isn't a clear call to action.

From my reading of the discussion, the majority of participants are clearly in favor of loosening the group approval process. The first comment in that discussion is by joshk and he quotes a comment of mine, which already represents my viewpoint on the subject:

Our community has gotten large enough that community-focused groups are needed in order to help us take care of our own. Drupal Fit, LGBTQI Drupal, Drupalchix, Young Drupallers and Drupalgängers are all great examples. These aren't regional or working group but are essential for fostering the health of the community.

Also, for anyone who is "confused" by there being two groups with "Los Angeles" in the name, they can simply read the either the group's description or full mission statement and have their confusion immediately dispelled.

greggles’s picture

Status: Needs review » Postponed

@christefano your perspective is clear and well documented. If postponing this pending other issues feels worse than outright denying the group that's certainly an option.

christefano’s picture

Status: Postponed » Needs review

Greg, as you requested I've contributed to the wiki at http://groups.drupal.org/node/70433 with a link to how StackExchange approves new sites. This approval process is only hinted at in the wiki, so I commented at http://groups.drupal.org/node/70433#comment-731874 with more detail.

When I looked for official group moderation guidelines, I found the first discussion about creating guidelines at http://groups.drupal.org/node/339 where you said:

Unpublishing groups has the drawback of potentially pissing people off and "quieting" the growth of that group. The group owner may have just sent out an email to his 20 friends saying "go sign up" and then the site doesn't work. That's not a good image for the site or drupal in general.

My feeling is that we should generally promote the pages first and ask questions later.

So, how about approving the Downtown Los Angeles group? I don't see any harm in approving it. Do you? We're all free to change our minds, but I'm wondering what has changed since you originally wrote that. If having similar words in the title is the only issue here, then I'm open to suggestions.

The group submission guidelines at http://groups.drupal.org/node/add/og have already been fulfilled. Using the StackExchange methodology, even their guidelines have been fulfilled. Please don't postpone this issue again without being specific about which pending issues you're referring to.

In closing, are you saying that me feeling bad is an option? Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you, but that's how I read it. This treatment is what I think makes people leave the community or stop using Drupal.org infrastructure and use GitHub and Meetup.com.

greggles’s picture

Status: Needs review » Postponed

I said we should do it generally and there's nothing "general" about this group. I'm not arguing with you point by point but I don't agree with a lot of things you've said in #38. Please stop changing the status to an inappropriate one.

nodiac’s picture

After reading through this entire thread, it's not clear to me why this group's approval is postponed, or why there is so much controversy surrounding its approval.

Does providing the tools to the people who are organizing events help the community?
Yes.

Can the people who are currently organizing these events able to get the tools they have the way with the current structure of any other approved groups?
No.

Does allowing a group of people who want to create and run events govern themselves using a different organizational structure good for the community?
Yes. It seems to me that happy organizers will put more energy into the community, and that removing friction from organizing would mean less energy going into frustration and more into beneficial activities.

Is the Downtown LA group distinct?
Yes. Downtown LA is a distinct geographical area with a distinct group of people who are deeply committed to transparency in running their group, allowing the people who are actively contributing to the community access to the tools they need to actually contribute to the community. The LA Drupal group is not.

Since these people are currently running four different meetups per month, and countless free mentoring, tutoring, training and other events, and they've allocated a generous amount of their time toward the Drupal community, it's better that their tools save them time and not present roadblocks to their effectiveness.

Beyond that, the presence of Droplabs, a coworking hackerspace dedicated to serving the Drupal community, requires a different structure than the LA Drupal group can provide.

Greg and the other groups.drupal.org site admins, please let us run ourselves!

greggles’s picture

@nodiac - you've presented a compelling emotional argument, but it lacks substance. I'm unswayed.

In Denver I talked to Christefano about a way forward: implementing http://groups.drupal.org/node/70433

It's frustrating to me that we're stuck arguing via emotional appeals and tautologies instead of working toward those solutions.

laura s’s picture

I feel that we are mired here. To me, the burden is on the "no" argument to prove that the new group would be harmful to the Drupal community. Otherwise this proposed group should be approved.

It's frustrating to me that we're stuck arguing via emotional appeals and tautologies instead of working toward those solutions.

Frankly it's our own policies that have placed g.d.o moderators within the politics of this situation. Sh*t happens. People split up. I don't feel it's the Drupal community's job to police how Drupalists choose to organize. I commented in the g.d.o thread in #41, and encourage others to do the same. It's not really an issue thread, but it's a proposal that has lingered for far too dang long.

We should not be having discussions like this.

patrickfgoddard’s picture

Having a hard time following this thread. A VERY contentious debate at times, and that worries me about the health of this group.

In my opinion, had there been an open and transparent discussion about creating a separate downtown LA group in the first place, maybe this would have been as big of an issue.

My personal preference is being able to go to gdo/la and being able to see everything that is going on in the area from a high level, then drilling down via categories/taxonomy. I don't really want to subscribe to a bunch of different groups, I just don't have the time to pay attention.

I've been known to hit up the Long Beach meetups, but I don't know if I'd want a separate LB group as there is so much crossover of members from the general LA group. Too much fracturing.

nodiac’s picture

@greggles - If you cannot distinguish between a political argument and an emotional argument, and since groups are inherently political, it seems that you should not be the person making these decisions. Please recuse yourself.

@thund3rbox - Openness and transparency is what the Downtown group is looking for. Currently the organizers of that group are shut out from the tools they need by the LA Drupal group, and the decisions made by the LA Drupal group are made by a closed cadré of folks, in private, and are disclosed without input from the greater group. These are two of the biggest reasons why we want our own group. We wish to govern ourselves differently.

sreynen’s picture

Component: Other » New Group Proposal

Just moving this over to the new component to better track new group proposals where everyone can see them.

jstoller’s picture

I started writing this response long ago and have not had time to really give it its due. However, in light of the discussion's ruthless march forward, I figure it's better to post something than nothing. So here it is.

Since much of this issue comes down to one's perspective, let me tell you where my perspective is coming from. I'm not an event organizer, but I've been an active participant in LA Drupal for several years and have watched this current situation develop. I've attended both Downtown and Westside venues as often as my schedule allowed, in addition to all the camps. I was at the meet-up when Christefano first came back to LA. I was at the meet-up when things really blew-up between the managers, and I was at the subsequent meeting to discuss LA Drupal's management. I am on good terms with all of the local organizers and I hope to see that continue. I also—perhaps most importantly—have zero financial ties to any of the organizers, their businesses, or their venues, which I think gives me a certain amount of objectivity in this matter. My only motivation in this is to ensure we have a strong, supportive Drupal community in LA, with whom I can continue to learn and socialize.

I think "LA Drupal" is a perfectly reasonable name for that group and reflects the region it covers as accurately as anything else. That said, I do not think that the existence of a Los Angeles Drupal group necessarily precludes the use of "Los Angeles" in other group names. I think each group should be considered in context on a case-by-case basis.

On the other hand, "Downtown Los Angeles" seems like a largely inaccurate name for the newly proposed group. Let's forget for a moment that Droplabs, where the primary meetup is held, is on the outer edge of what might conceivably be called Downtown (you're east of the river and well north of the 101). But consider that the other big "Downtown" meet-up is held on the West Side, in Culver City, spitting distance from LA Drupal's last monthly meetup venue.

My intention here is not to start some debate on what is and isn't Downtown. Rather, I would like us to drop any pretext that this new group has anything at all to do with geography. The group's activities are not limited to an isolated region and the region it pretends to represent is not itself isolated from the existing LA group. It seems blatantly obvious that the motivation for this group is a personal conflict between a few local organizers and some disagreements among those organizers as to how the community should be managed. I'm happy to discuss the pros an cons of creating a group in this context, but can we please all agree that this is the real issue here and stop grasping for other justifications? It's only muddying the discussion and making it harder to reach any resolution.

Given that, lets consider the impact...

By creating this DTLA group, you're effectively setting up an overlapping group, directly competing with LA Drupal. We'd basically have LA Drupal 1 and 2. This may not be the intention, but it's the reality.

This group would give Christefano, as the group's owner, complete freedom to do whatever he wants in managing the group online. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of personal opinion, I suppose. If this were to decrease conflicts and friction with other organizers then I might consider that a positive outcome, but I question whether that would be the end result in the long term.

In addition to granting online authority, this would also be a tacit endorsement of Christefano, et al, as representatives of the Drupal community in Los Angeles. Again, some may think this is good and some may take issue with it, but I'm going to put that aside for now. My bigger concern is that we would be left with two groups of people, operating completely independently of one another, each with apparently equal authority to represent the exact same group of people.

I believe this will cause confusion among community members, on and offline. They will have a harder time knowing where to look for information and where to post things. Worse yet, this sets up an atmosphere of us verse them, drawing everyone into the personal conflict and amplifying the overall level of discomfort.

I also believe this will cause confusion among sponsors. Whether its book publishers or camp sponsors, having two LA groups will make people less likely to support either one. I know if I was a potential sponsor, I'd wonder why LA couldn't get their shit together and hesitate before giving us anything.

If LA Drupal were a truly dysfunctional group, marginalizing it's members, then perhaps this extreme step would be justified. But it isn't. 99% of LA Drupal members have been perfectly content with how things are managed. I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement, but I personally haven't found LA Drupal terribly closed off or opaque, and I certainly haven't found the Downtown crew any more transparent in their operations. So while I empathize with the position Christefano is currently in, it hardly justifies such a major upheaval in the broader community. I think there are better ways to deal with this. In fact, from where I stand, this tact is only serving to escalate things.

The bottom line is, this is not a distinct group and—whether or not you agree with them—there are credible reasons to think this move would be bad for the community. I personally believe the negatives significantly outweigh any potential positives. The organizers may not have all the tools they would like right now, but they certainly have enough to get by and the rest of their issues have technological solutions that do not involve fracturing the existing group.

As a compromise, I MIGHT consider supporting a Droplabs group. Droplabs is certainly a distinct constituency, with a specific geographic location. A Droplabs group could then participate in the larger LA Drupal community without asserting any level of implied authority over that community. Droplabs group admins would be able to post events in their group, but cross-post to LA Drupal. If I understand correctly, this means Droplabs group admins could edit each other's posts while still getting those posts to show up on the LA Drupal event calendar. Is that right? If so, this would give Christefano the tools he's been asking for. As long as I can get those events in my LA Drupal iCal feed, without separately subscribing to the Droplabs calendar, I'm good.

My big concern would be that Droplabs is a commercial venture, of sorts, and I don't know what the policy is for this sort of thing on GDO. Technicalities aside, I do think Droplabs is a different sort of venture, given that they open their doors to anyone free of charge. So they seem to act kind of like a non-profit, even if they aren't one. It's like a free community center, with some extras you can pay for if you want to use them.

If a Droplabs group were to be created, I would also want some assurance that it would only be used for good. In other words, I wouldn't want to turn around six months or a year from now and find that the Droplabs group was being leveraged as an in to further fracture LA Drupal, or to try and usurp broader control. While Droplabs managers might sponsor events all over the city, I wouldn't want to see any implications on GDO that Droplabs represented Los Angeles, or even Downtown Los Angeles. Coordination and collaboration with the rest of LA Drupal should still be strongly encouraged.

If it is possible/agreeable to implement Droplabs in this way, then I could see the group having a beneficial impact on the community; potentially reducing some of the current tension among local organizers.

christefano’s picture

I'm stupefied why #46 talks about avoiding an "us vs. them" situation while for some reason I'm being repeatedly singled out. I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left. (Margaret Thatcher)

We organize our group in a horizontal fashion and I'm not the "group owner". I'm one of the lead organizers of particular events, but I don't own the group and I collaborate openly and equally with everyone at those events. As much as I like to see my name over and over, I think each instance of "Christefano" in #46 should be replaced with "the Downtown organizers". The post makes much more sense that way.

It would still be incomplete and out of date, though.

In the past 2 years, there's been plenty of marginalization and lack of cooperation within the LA Drupal group and its organizers. One of the ways that things can be smoothed out is to forgo the "main" or "official" meetup language for LA Drupal meetups. Using that language immediately affects other meetups' and groups' chances of finding sponsorship and attendees.

I'm not persuaded by the argument that multiple groups in proximity with one another will introduce a new problem with attracting sponsors and attendees. This is an existing problem with little resolution in sight. This is one of the reasons why we want our own group to govern as we wish.

There's also a question of whether this type of competition is even unhealthy. Demand for Drupal continues to grow and the number of sponsors has grown, as well.

Regarding the notion of a Droplabs group instead of a Downtown group, the other Droplabs members and founders may think differently than I do and they can speak for themselves but I'm not really in favor of the idea. There are plans to open new Droplabs locations and creating one regional "Droplabs" group or renaming Downtown to "Droplabs" doesn't make any sense. People shouldn't have to join Droplabs in order to participate in the Downtown community. There are other events in the Downtown area that aren't at Droplabs, such as movie outings and Drupal Design Camp LA.

jstoller’s picture

@Christefano
Nothing in my post was intended as a personal attack—or an attack at all, for that matter—so I'm sorry if you took it as such. I am simply trying to discuss the implications of your proposal as calmly and rationally as I know how. I obviously disagree with your assessment of the situation, but I bear you no ill will and I respect your desire to support the Drupal community.

When I called you out as the group owner, I meant quite literally that you are the owner of the group node on GDO. You may have granted other users group admin rights, but you created it and are therefore listed as the author in the {node} table. Beyond that, it is your actions that initiated this debate and you are by far the most vocal of the Downtown organizers who have spoken on this topic. So it doesn't seem like a big stretch to give you the lions share of credit/responsibility for this move. You'll also have to chalk some of this up to the English language, which does not distinguish between "you" Christefano and "you" group of people.

I respect the fact that you, Christefano, feel marginalized within the LA Drupal group, but I would not classify this as a broad, systemic problem. It seems quite localized and, to be honest, I don't think anyone's hands are completely clean in that conflict. I would be happy to discuss it with you in more detail in person, but this does not seem the appropriate venue. I would prefer that this discussion not devolve into an airing of everyone's dirty laundry, or a litany of he-said-she-said attacks, so if we could table that debate for a different forum, I think we would all be the better for it. Grab me at a Drupal After Dark.

I will say that I myself was strongly against the whole "main meeting" concept when I first heard it, but I've sense learned some of the motivations behind that decision and no longer have a problem with it. In any case, that discussion too seems somewhat tangential to the question at hand, so perhaps it should also be saved for discussion elsewhere.

You're assertion that competition is healthy is a bit more to the point, but I respectfully disagree. Free market competition is great and all that, but not within a community like ours. I mean, if you want to compete with the local Wordpress meetups and pull from their ranks, then by all means lets crush them! But I don't think it is ever healthy to talk about competition between Drupal events. All of us should be working together to support the broader Drupal community. This isn't some contest to see which meetup can draw the most attendees. Individual attendance numbers are irrelevant, as long as the number of people engaging with the community over all keeps going up. Any initiative within the community that seeks to compete with the rest of the community seems horribly flawed and suspect. In general we should stress collaboration, not competition. That's how a community gets stronger.

As for a Droplabs group, I think you're missing my point. Much like @thund3rbox expressed in #43, the whole idea is that I shouldn't need to join another group at all in order to participate in my community, which to me includes Downtown. As I said, I don't think a Droplabs group should in any way represent Downtown LA at large, so where Droplabs is located and how many locations it has is largely immaterial. I'm mainly presenting it as a short-term workaround for the technical issues you've raised regarding the management of event postings on GDO. I would fully expect that any Drupal events posted in Droplabs would be cross-posted to LA Drupal and that is where I would expect the bulk of community engagement to remain. I'm just saying that if the event organizers happen to be users/members of Droplabs, then there's no reason why the event listings couldn't originate from a Droplabs group. And if you're OK with all those event co-organizers being managers of said Droplabs group, then I think your technical problems are solved. Meanwhile I can continue to subscribe just to the LA group, if I wish, without missing out on any of that content.

nodiac’s picture

If I may...speaking as one of the Droplabs founders, while many of the founders and people who organize at Droplabs are organizers of this group, it isn't a complete overlap. Droplabs may be branching out, other locations are also interested in forming chapters, and the current gdo structure is problematic for that.

We've also been going for a year and haven't broken even yet. The donations we're getting from Drupal events, tutoring, the free classes we're hosting or the freemium business model isn't coming close to covering our costs, so there has been discussion of changing up Droplabs' mission. While we'd like to remain free to come and work and learn, it may not be viable. (If you would like to contribute, you can do so through our website: http://droplabs.net .)

:-D

Droplabs is a different kind of entity, and may be going in a different direction. If we remain Drupal-centric, and can work out with greggles what sort of form it needs to take on gdo to manifest how people wind up using it, then that will be the right time to start a Droplabs group, but trying to force Droplabs into the current structure of gdo now wouldn't work for us.

Meanwhile, there is a steady group of organizers who have formed around Downtown LA. Some of us don't come to Droplabs except for meetups.

We have trouble even getting funding for chairs for meetups from the LA Drupal Association, and wind up funding rentals out of our own pockets, which is irksome when they have over eight grand in the bank. Just because others are not as vocal as Christefano doesn't mean that we haven't been marginalized or that we don't have a good case for organizing ourselves according to a different kind of structure if we want.

Cross posting means that you do not need to sign up for more than one group in order to find events. Our not being able to have the process we want to create and organize and curate those event announcements as well as our own discussions will mean that a lot of energy will go into being frustrated and dealing with our current bottlenecks. Forcing us to try to work within the current LA Drupal structure means settling for second class citizenhood within that group's structure. There is constant friction between subsets of the two groups' members, and that tension is only going to get worse and more painful if we're forced to work together. I don't have very thick skin for being bullied, and I cannot work with people who are going to insult me and shut me down, telling me to let the big boys handle it, and then who do nothing.

In my home town, there was one street that had all Christian churches on it. All of them broke away from the Roman Catholic church or each other at one time, and they simply wanted to worship in their own way. Groups breaking off and going in new directions is something that people do. It's organic, like organic groups.

No-one had any trouble figuring out which church they wanted to go to, even if they were next door to each other, and when I was a younger, I attended all of them, and the Synagogue, in order to figure out what the whole religion thing was about. Would you have forced Martin Luther to remain within the Roman church? Downtown LA seems to be the congregationalists, and LA Drupal seems to be analogous to the Roman church. This isn't a perfect analogy, but the essence of free congregational structure, and the freedom of association and recognition are akin to what we're asking for.

People are not idiots, Jeremy. They're free to attend whatever meetups they want. If there's a downtown group, or a Pasadena group, they can ask questions if they're curious, and we'll say something palatable and mature to them, and I don't think they'll care that much. The groups split last year, and the past months have been about trying to heal, but it's just better that we not be stepping on each other's toes and in each other's faces. The healing takes place when we're apart. When we're at meetups we're polite. Once certain folks have a few drinks in them, it all falls apart again.

Jeremy, you don't know all the story because LA Drupal is not transparent, nor do they want to be. I've stood by when legally actionable libel was hurled at my company in private discussion forums, not to mention personal attacks on members of the Downtown group in the public organizers' list. This isn't an issue of inconvenience or egos. We just want to create the best events we can with as little drama as possible, and that's impossible to do when we're constantly defending ourselves. And it isn't much fun, either.

laura s’s picture

Responding to the broader question of gdo governance.

By creating this DTLA group, you're effectively setting up an overlapping group, directly competing with LA Drupal.

As a gdo moderator, I have a problem with the concept of "competing" groups. How are groups competitive? If one doesn't have a horse in this race, one can pick and choose among various options. (A bit of courteous cross-linking would address any potential confusion imho. Findability need not be a true barrier.)

IMHO, the idea of gdo is not to dub one group an "official" authority on meetups, problem-solving, ideation, etc., but to create by affordance a culture of collaboration through opportunity. The /about page, now almost exactly 6 years old, starts off:

Groups.drupal.org facilitates collaboration for collections of Drupal fans everywhere.

What "facilitates collaboration" means seems to be a point of contention here. Does such facilitation happen through providing opportunities and tools for community members to collaborate? Or does facilitation happen through enforcing existing structures through which such collaboration must happen?

In a free open source project, I see little value in enforcing collaboration where there's clearly little interest in pursuing it. Different groups work in different ways. On the other hand, I see much to be gained by opening up opportunities to collaborate. Drupal events have BOFs that do exactly that. Want to meet and collaborate on something? Create a BOF and do it! No restrictions (except limited space), no need for official sanction, just do it! And BOFs have become one of the best things about DrupalCons and DrupalCamps. Gdo is, or could be, a collection of virtual BOFs, except without the limitations on space.

A major cost I see of the alternative is that we gdo moderators end up being de facto community political enforcers, saying "no, you can't because someone else is already doing that." By our granting squatting rights on regions and topics, we are in essence embracing a political culture, and imposing a political structure, that resists change by limiting options of community members.

Why must gdo pick winners in competing visions? So what if there are more than one group for a given region or topic? Is the Drupal community one big homogenous community? Or is it an amalgamation of thousands of micro-communities united by the software, the GPL, the commons? By enforcing squatting rights, we are providing official sanction of each and every group, which by extension implies responsibility for the actions of each group so designated, and I don't think we want to go there – or have the resources to go there, even if we wanted to. We are not structured or staffed for that, and I think it falls outside of any charter. By opening up the gdo groups process (and I don't mean via vote in popularity contests), gdo moderators can focus on broad-spectrum behavior guidelines and not get sidetracked into refereeing intra-community conflicts.

Michelle’s picture

+1000 to #50. With 87 groups in the moderation queue, our current method clearly isn't working.

This conversation is perhaps better on http://groups.drupal.org/node/70433 though?

Michelle

ezra-g’s picture

+1000 to #50. With 87 groups in the moderation queue, our current method clearly isn't working.

I think you mean the *previous* method? Per #1551308: Move new group proposal process to GDO issue queue, new group moderation now happens in the public issue queue.

Michelle’s picture

Ah, I had forgotten that discussion, sorry. Too early to say if that will help. When I suggested opening our project application process in the same way, it helped but not nearly as much as I'd hoped. :(

sreynen’s picture

This conversation is perhaps better on http://groups.drupal.org/node/70433 though?

Agreed. There's obviously a lot of interconnected issues, but there are plenty of people interested in the general group approval process who aren't following this specific issue.

laura s’s picture

I think you mean the *previous* method? Per #1551308: Move new group proposal process to GDO issue queue, new group moderation now happens in the public issue queue.

As a groups moderator, it's nice to be alerted to such things in ad hoc ways. ;) Then again, until 2 minutes ago, #1551308: Move new group proposal process to GDO issue queue had input from one person only.

At any rate, I feel this current issue has been caught in the bureaucracy of community process now, and unfortunately now probably should wait until the guidelines and approval process are revised and clarified.

sreynen’s picture

As a groups moderator, it's nice to be alerted to such things in ad hoc ways.

In addition to the movement of this specific issue in #45, the move to the GDO queue was discussed in the http://groups.drupal.org/node/70433 thread, where general process issues belong, since they impact much more than this specific issue. As I documented in the issue, it's not done yet, which is why there hasn't yet been a wider announcement. I'll probably finish it tomorrow, and then we'll start moving things over and alerting everyone. If you'd like to see that move faster, help is always welcome.

ezra-g’s picture

Status: Postponed » Needs work
FileSize
237.14 KB

sreynen and I have given this issue a great deal of thought and discussed with a number of people. Thanks to everyone who provided input, and to webchick who jumped on a call to help us hash this out this afternoon.

As folks have pointed out previously in the present thread, this issue is about 2 things: Whether the new Downtown LA group should be approved, and what the broader process and policy around new and overlapping/duplicate group creation on GDO should be.

Up until now, sreynen and I have shared the position that we'd like to see criteria for new group creation retain a focus on avoiding competing groups until we as a community can implement improvements to the automated tools on GDO that help community members to discover relevant, active groups and identify dormant, inactive ones.

While the initial proposal to improve those tools was submitted nearly two years ago, there hasn't yet been an implementation of those tools. Recently, there is renewed expectation that we'll be able to implement solutions in this area after GDO moves to Drupal 7, but realistically that won't be for several more months.

Given that we would be loosening the limitation on new group submission in a few months anyhow, we've concluded that it would be unhelpful and would only further tensions to delay the approval of overlapping groups until GDO moves to Drupal 7. The member count, which is displayed towards the top of every group homepage, also helps to distinguish established groups from new groups that might have overlap in focus.

We certainly empathize with organizers and members of existing groups who may feel frustrated and view new, overlapping groups as diverting participation away from their group.

However, as we can see with the present issue and others, trying to prevent groups from splintering off doesn't actually reduce conflict. If anything, it increases the extent to which community members and GDO site maintainers are involved with regional conflict at the expense of making the site more awesome for everyone.

As a result, we've decided based on community suggestions in this thread and the "Loosening up the Policy on Groups Acceptance - Rules and Tools" thread to adopt a policy for GDO that is similar to the convention used for overlapping Drupal.org projects, where maintainers of new projects explain prominently on the project page the difference between the project they are creating and existing projects with a similar purpose.

The Guidelines for Forming New Drupal Groups has been updated to say that:

If the group you are proposing has a similar or overlapping focus an existing group, you must clarify the difference between your group and the existing group(s) on your group's homepage.

We're certainly open to improvements to the policy that help reduce conflict, and also encourage folks to participate in the Drupal Community Governance project's discussion of community conflict resolution.

The present issue is therefore marked as "needs work" so that christefano can clarify on the new Downtown LA group homepage how that group differs in purpose from the existing LA group, and in particular, the "Downtown LA" taxonomy term within that group. The explanation currently on the new Downtown LA group homepage does not seem to accomplish this.

LA Group homepage

laura s’s picture

This sounds like a great step forward for the g.d.o groups moderation process stuff. :)

christefano’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review

Thanks, Ezra, for making this announcement. I think it's a clear policy and, in the case of this issue, an easy one to follow.

I've updated the Downtown Los Angeles Drupal group's mission:

The Downtown Los Angeles Drupal group has a growing membership and regularly meets in and around Downtown Los Angeles. Our general Downtown Los Angeles Drupal meetup has been meeting regularly on the 3rd Tuesday of the month since early 2010.

Since 2011, the Downtown area has seen nearly 100 events, including dozens of Drupal meetups and workshops, 2 conferences about design and theming, countless FREE tutoring sessions from Drupal professionals and several barn raisings to benefit non-profits and members of our community here in and around Los Angeles.

This group is a lightly curated source for information and discussion, including announcements, meetups and other events. Join our community and you can configure your email notification settings to receive just the notifications you want. For the firehose of all Drupal activity in Southern California, see the LA Drupal "umbrella" group at http://groups.drupal.org/la

What's different about this group?

Unlike the LA Drupal group, which has a small number of organizers for an ambiguously large area, the Downtown Los Angeles Drupal group has a large team of organizers who focus specifically on promoting Drupal and fostering community in the Downtown area.

Our leadership team endeavors to actively empower and support volunteers and attendees in the Downtown area, and to provide resources (venues, guidance, equipment, raffle prizes, etc.) and a governance model with both transparency and accountability.

We welcome cross-posting from other groups if your posts are relevant to this one, but note that we view Downtown Los Angeles Drupal as a distinct community and not just a bucket for posts.

I've made this update in order to help move this issue along and it's sure to be updated over time by the other Downtown group moderators and organizers.

As an aside, I'd love to have a separate field on group nodes for the details of how the group differs so that they don't double the length of the group's mission statement, but perhaps that's another issue for another day. In the meantime, we can try using custom content panes on our other OG Panel pages instead of the standard group mission.

The present issue is therefore marked as "needs work" so that christefano can clarify on the new Downtown LA group homepage how that group differs in purpose from the existing LA group, and in particular, the "Downtown LA" taxonomy term within that group. The explanation currently on the new Downtown LA group homepage does not seem to accomplish this.

(Emphasis given.)

Taxonomy as it currently works on groups.drupal.org is a good tool for organizing content, not people. To organize ourselves effectively as a distinct community, we want more than just vocabularies and have access to our own OG Vocab, OG Broadcast, OG Panels and OG editing abilities.

Believe me when I say that I understand the value of using taxonomy for organizing content. I think the "Event locations" vocabulary is great, but a big part of why I think that is because I created it and all the terms within it (except for Long Beach).

After I proposed at a Hollywood Drupal meetup to create the vocabulary and its terms, I went through all past events (there were 400 or so at the time) and tagged them with their location. Finally, I made the event location a required field so that new events would be tagged by the content authors.

It was by using that vocabulary and OG Vocab's term count that I identified which areas in Los Angeles were being under-served, which informed all organizers and volunteers (myself included) how and where to organize events and build community more effectively.

This is becoming a long-winded story, but I hope it illustrates the key difference between organizing content vs. organizing community. Taxonomy is good for the content organizing and discovery part, but it's what we do with that information that makes us better organizers.

sreynen’s picture

Status: Needs review » Fixed

Now that the description is updated to make the differences clearer, I've moved the group out of moderation.

newbstah’s picture

Thank you to all who participated in this lengthly process, and thank you to everyone who was supportive. My hope is that no group needs to go through something like this again.

laura s’s picture

My hope is that no group needs to go through something like this again.

+1000.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.