Drupal.org site maintainer's guide

This page lists some guidelines for Site Maintainers on Drupal.org.

Promote / Demote Content on front page

1. When promoting or demoting front page content, select the revision box and note the reason in the log.
2. Actively seek out popular stories both on drupal.org, planet drupal, and the Internet and suggest they get promoted to the front page on drupal.org. Sites with fresh, regularly aggregated content are more popular. Make sure the stories are highly relevant to the broad Drupal community and the Drupal project.
3. Ask another site maintainer if your story is appropriate for the front page. This will help ensure that you are not inadvertently self promoting. It's also good to have at least one other person review the quality of your post.
4. Try to space out posts by at least 24 hours. You can use the Front Page Schedule page to coordinate with other maintainers. The sooner a story gets off the front page, the less attention it will receive. If your story is not time critical - like a contest with a deadline or an urgent call to action - then consider delaying your front page post so it gets more time on the home page.
5. Publishing local events, news, and event announcements is being discussed in a conversation regarding the BADcamp 2007 announcement and specifically in regards to the LACamp 2008 case study.

Unpublishing vs deleting of content

You should only unpublish a post if you can conceivably imagine it being re-published in the future. This should only be for very rare cases. A good example is an unmaintained project (someone might take over development later): unpublish, don't delete. On the other hand, spam can be deleted immediately.

Content that is outdated by another page should also be unpublished with a comment in the revision log linked to the newer page. After some time goes by, it can reviewed again and deleted.

Blocking vs deleting of users

Deleting users is a very destructive action, as it makes all their content inaccessible in most places, even to administrators. It should not be done. If a user is a troublemaker, just block their account (click username -> edit -> status: blocked). Of course, you should not block people just because they say unfavorable things about Drupal. Here are good reasons to block someone:

• Spamming (even once)
• Repetitive flaming
• Repetitive posting of trash content (test posts, inappropriate book pages, ...)
• File a webmasters' issue with a link to the user name for the site admins to block more easily

Badly formatted posts

If you see a post with bad formatting which messes up the page's layout, please edit it. A common mistake for newbies is to use two opening tags rather than an opening/closing pair. Tags like bold and italic can 'bleed through' beyond the post, while unclosed block-level tags can mess up the positioning of the sidebar.

If someone made a serious mistake while posting a forum topic and posted a correction in a comment below, try to update the original post and delete the correction.

Select the revision tag and note in the log as well.

Duplicate posts

If you see duplicate posts in multiple forums, choose the best forum and remove the remaining duplicates unless they already have respondes. If they already have comments, make a polite note about duplicate posts referencing the other.

Suggested Courses of Action

When you spot something out of the ordinary, we suggest these steps:

1. Take a look at the user's post history on the "user -> track -> track posts" page. This will possibly show more bad posts by the same person.
2. Take a look at the user's page visit history on the "user -> track -> track page visits" page. That way, you can easily tell if a user just registered to spam or if they made only one bad post in a series of good ones.
3. If the content is spam or off-topic, you can delete it immediately and block the person's account. Otherwise, send them a note through their contact tab about it:
   

   Your post Foobar on http://drupal.org/node/1234 was inappropriate because it contained flaming. Please be nice to your fellow visitors on Drupal.org, or your account may be blocked.

4. If you know someone to be a troublemaker who has been warned before, block their account.
5. When possible, file an issue against the webmasters project with a brief reason so others will know why an account was blocked. If you blocked the account, then please close the issue as well.

Document Your Actions: Queue or Revision Log

When you've made a major change to the site, it's good to keep track of it. If you are editing a node, just use the "Log message" field and be sure that the "Create new revision" checkbox is on. If you are adding/removing/modifying user accounts or Planet Drupal content, you should also document the action in the webmasters issue queue. If you edit a comment, just add [edited by {yourname} because...] and provide the reason for the change.