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| Project: | Drupal.org webmasters |
| Component: | Redesign |
| Category: | feature request |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | Unassigned |
| Status: | active |
Issue Summary
From the revision log at https://drupal.org/node/243783/revisions
unpublishing for now. Why are we linking to off site resources for this type of information? A better write up for the Getting Started book would be on contributing and involvement and how to see using Drupal.org.
That's a really good question. There is currently not one single page on drupal.org where the contributors to Drupal core are mentioned by name. Compare this to the documentation team page, which even has a page count next to each name. Having a similar page that lists the people who have been credited for patches applied against core will do the following:
- It encourages more contributions by recognizing the community members whose patches are accepted into core.
- In one location, the question of how many contributors there are is authoritatively answered. This information already exists but is scattered across many Drupal release notes, Google Tech Talk videos, printed books and forum and mailing list discussions.
If you're wondering why the information I linked to isn't anywhere on drupal.org, I suggest you ask the people who posted it elsewhere. In any case, my reason for creating the "Drupal core contributors" page is to get that kind of information posted on drupal.org.
In closing, please contact me in the future if you're going to unpublish my posts. It's only by luck that I noticed your notes in the revision logs they were bumped off of the Recent updates page.
Comments
#1
The desire to expose code contributor information is laudable but really belongs on the project pages of the projects in question. This information is available already in the cvs messages, porject issue queue and in cvs system itself. I believe that dww has plans to make this information more accessible but is not really part of documentation and not in keeping with the Getting Started book..
Unfortunately, there is no way with my current work load, and attention to my family life that I have time to track and contact everyone who makes a change in the handbooks.
#2
It makes all kinds of sense to me that there's a single page in the handbook that provides this kind of information. I have personally been asked how many contributors there are (mostly by clients interested in Drupal's sustainability but also by a fellow developer in a Drupal meetup I attended this month). To add more to the second reason I wrote in my post, this is also important marketing information.
According to http://drupal.org/node/21778 handbook pages are not considered Drupal core. Patches that update documentation inside Drupal core can be tracked by the methods you listed.
It seemed to me that the "Drupal core contributors" page should be under The Drupal core but I've moved it to the Developing for Drupal book. I'll talk with dww and others to see how publishing these statistics can best be done without creating more work for you.
#3
If the information is in the handbook, then it would go into the Drupal resources book in the same area as the handbook contributors instead of developing for Drupal. The information on the numbers is listed in the Drupal 6 release announcement.
The Getting Started book is about getting started. Very focused intro to the project and install.
We are evolving and refactoring the about one into the community and resources. add1sun has an issue open with an outline. It's not about creating more work, it's about linking to sites that may or may not be there in a few months or be maintained in peoples copious spare time. This also seems like something that is a perfect candidtate for the powers of automation instead of the powers of manual update.
#4
I'm moving this to webmasters since this is not really a docs issue per se.
#5
The need to display core maintainer in a nicely formatted web page came up again in Drupalcon D.C.
The discussion was that many developers prefered working their own modules instead of contributing to the core until a core contributors page by Drupal version would be available on d.o.
The Drupal.org redesign is a good place for this to happen.
#6
Is the guy who comes to me in IRC reporting a weird HEAD issue a core contributor? Fixing the bug is easy... finding it... now that's hard.
#7
Hey! Guys reporting issues are not a contributors in my book. ;-)
The idea is to list code contributors.
#8
When I first visited the drupal.org site I searched for the term "Development team", as everybody would do with an open source project. right!? oh, yes..
Comparing my previous experience with the current handbook search .... hmm, I must tell it is still not what it should be.. So who is developing this, this Drupal?
#9
There is http://cvs.drupal.org/viewvc.py/drupal/drupal/MAINTAINERS.txt which has been slowly expanding over time. But the real strength of Drupal is the hundreds of contributors who help out, both in core and contrib.
Sorry, but I could not possibly disagree more with this. A thorough bug report that helps a coder track down a problem and fix it easily, or a great patch review that results in a much stronger and more flexible feature, or setting up a demo site with a patch so that non-technical users can test are all worth their weight in gold. Honestly, the real list of core contributors is probably anyone who posted a comment in the Drupal queue longer 50 characters or so (gotta filter out those 'subscribes' :P) to a bug, task, or feature request issue.
However, in the meantime, it'd be nifty if we could have a per-project listing of 'contributors' as people mentioned in the commit messages, who are typically the coders, but also often those who put a lot of time in to any given issue whether they posted a patch or not.
#10
OK, I am going off topic here, but I really would like to see one handbook page titled "Development team" where this crazy Drupal project management thing is clearly explained..
#11
@Pasqualle - as Dries explained in his State of Drupal presentation, there is no "Development team" - we have a loose group of people who contribute and that is a major strength of the project.
#12
@greggles I know, but it is really hard to find this information, and this info is simply not enough. In my early days I had to spent enormous amount of time to figure out who is this guy and who is that, who is the guy who answered my question. Is he really knows what he is saying, because he does not sound like that? Who is merlin, why he is the only one with a technical blog post? Why the person named on the module's project page did not post anything in the last 3 months, is he still working on this? Where to ask my first question directed to him? (many developers disabled the contact form (or refused to answer) because of this obvious reason) The problem is not with the new users, there is a missing communication step.. There is no other project where you have to read the handbook to find the Development team..
So it would be nice, if there would be a list of people behind the project, and also a list of users who are prominent members of the community (team leaders), who are introduced to new users. I would propose that this (3 lines of) introduction info (+personal blog link) should be grabbed from a field in the user profile, so users not on the list will have similar introductions..
Most open source projects have teams, where new users have to apply to be part of the project. So we must communicate loudly that this project is different. There is no application, you are part of the team (and you can work on whatever you want) at the moment when you create an account on the drupal.org..
#13
I know I do not belong to any maintainers, I just wanted to give the maintainers.txt informations
but the page was deleted moved or whatever ....
I still do not understand why it's so difficolt to start to put people in evidence that worked hard and some still do for Drupal?
anyway I still have the page I did edit here and when this issue will have been worked out
you may let me know or not. I seems that it becomes default procedure to ignore someone like me that wants to do some small documentation contribution
I really do not have any clue why this is so?
Regards
#14
Assuming the role of 'poor me' doesn't actually help anyone make a case.
There is a link to the current maintainers.txt for those with overall responsibility for various realms. Trying to have a static entry in the handbook doesn't work over time because the information becomes outdated very quickly.
The title for that page is also somewhat misleading. I shall consider what to change it to. There is no _core team_ in the traditional development sense. There are specific people who have commit rights to Drupal core. There are various 'maintainers' who are the ones who carry responsibility in a given module/realm, but these are not really a 'team'. These are merely the ones generally validating the work of the contributors.
There is no 'missing contact step' here. To deal with an issue, submit one to the queue. It will get worked on or it won't by members of the community, some of whom may be the maintainers.
#15
@sepeck
I did sure not wnat to take any "role" I'm just a member of Drupal Community if you allow me?!
I just try to support the policy that is general known by anyone here that Drupal.org defend the right of document and inform, by actuality and historically
what and who contribute on any form in the community.
This is of course my personal understanding on the overall Drupal Community politic. I might be wrong, may be not. So if you thing that there is no need
for an information page on who contributed as maintainer for Drupal during the period historical development of Druapal, that's your right.
I just please you do not "tag" my comments as "poor me" that looks really not suited for me. I'm sure not "poor" or aim to take this kind of role.
Regards
#16
Linking this from the Redesign project #661566: Meta issue for Drupal.org webmaster project because this issue was tagged 'drupal.org redesign'
#17
marked #325018: The page about "List of core maintainers" is incomplete as a duplicate of this.
#18
I'm removing the "drupal.org redesign" tag. This isn't directly related to the redesign.
#20
While I see the value in this, I think part of Drupal's 'mystique' is the fact that anyone can become a core contributor... then not have the pressure of being in an official list of core contributors.
Since working on my first patch for core, I have become a lot more experienced as a PHP developer, and much more familiar with Drupal's APIs/codebase. I look back on that patch with a sense of "what the heck was I thinking" (wrt some of the comment replies I made...), but I know that the fact that I didn't have to compare myself to other core contributors to submit a patch was helpful. I felt that I could help in a small way, without the pressure of having to have strong coding chops... others who had those skills helped me refine my patch along the way.
Maybe anyone who has a mention in core's CVS messages could have a tag on their profile page instead, or maybe even links to all core commits with their username in them (could we do this through Solr?)?
#21
Alright, I came across this issue by accident, but I'd agree it's a won't fix as it stands. Nearly 1000 people contributed directly to D7 patches and 500ish have already contributed to D8. That's not going to fit on any one page.
That said, though, maybe we want to add core commit mention counts to d.o profiles. I think there's probably an open issue for that somewhere, but I can't find it.
#22
Alright, I looked for awhile and didn't find an existing issue, so repurposing this one.
So far there are a few different attempts at parsing Drupal core commit mentions: