Mission statement rewrite

I'm all for improving the mission statement. I do feel this should not be done precipitously. I'd suggest giving it at least 2 weeks before action. Say October 17 (Friday)?

To the point of the statement itself, I feel it focuses on the product itself, and ignores the community and the process. I'd suggest adding something like "...and cultivating a community that encourages and supports these efforts."

i would very much welcome this "new" slogan.

Any change to the mission statement should have Dries explicit acknowledgment.

I also vote a +1 for this change.

"Expressing modularity"? To me that sounds like something from a quantum New Age ecology handout and I definitely wouldn't want it to be part of the mission statement.

I think that the proposed words, "valuing," "supporting," and "expressing" are superfluous and sound oddly disembodied without the "We value" part. I much prefer the 2001 version and would make only two minor changes.

1. On its own, the phrase "implementing the latest thinking" may make Drupal appear susceptible to what fads are trendy. I'd change it to "implementing the latest thinking and best practices"

2. I'd separate the points about product, community and code into bullet points so that the paragraph structure doesn't look like a run-on sentence

Here's what my proposed changes to the 2001 version would look like:

To develop a leading edge open-source content management system that implements the latest thinking and best practices in community publishing, knowledge management, and software design.

We value:

• Flexibility, simplicity, and utility in our product;
• Teamwork, innovation, and openness in our community;
• Modularity, extensibility and maintainability in our code.

Sorry Catch. :-) I'm changing my vote. The bullets points win. A +1 for the mission statement in #7. It really reads well, is visually compelling, and gets the point across without being 'heavy'. and there's nothing in there that's wrong, save for the "teamwork, flexibility, and openness in our community"...

I kid, I KID! ;-)

Let's get this one in front of Dries.

The draft in #7 is great, but as was mentioned in the original thread on groups, it's actually a mission statement followed by a values statement.

If we change to the version in #7, we should change the title of the page from "Mission" to "Mission and Values", IMO. Seems like we could leave the existing path, however.

I'm all for the version in #7 and changing the title of the page to "Mission and values".
We're more than 2 weeks from the initial proposal so perhaps Dries could do his say on this?

I published the new Mission. Dries can always revert of he desires.

What about the the text in the orange box on the home page? Replace it with this same text?

You mean this text?

Drupal.org is the official website of Drupal, an open source content management platform.

Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal supports a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.

I think it's best we leave it as is for now. Looking at the Iteration 6 homepage it looks like the new text has already been decided.

postponning untill desgn is fixed and dries picks this up. not that the redign team doesn /not/ decide what text where to plece (in fact, they should have been using lorem text to make this clear)

Why would we postpone a closed issue? Moshe made the changes to /mission in #12 and they appear to still be in place.

my bad

I think this topic needs a lot more consideration and discussion.

I agree that the mission needs work and that looking back at earlier versions is useful.

But I find the new mission that was posted bland and general. Presumably it could apply to pretty well any CMS. Change a few words and it could apply to any software project. Who doesn't want to be "leading edge", use the "latest thinking", and use "best practices"? These are motherhood statements. The "values" sort of help, but they largely replicate what's already in our "principles"--the next page in the handbook.

What's almost completely missing is: what are the core interests and commitments that drive Drupal? What sets it apart from other software projects and CMSs? A mission should not be some vague generalization--it should be the ambitious and compelling reason for our work.

No, a vague mention of community in the value statement does not in any way cover the case.

I wrote the first iteration of the mission that was replaced. At the same time, I wrote the Drupal principles http://drupal.org/principles, usability aims http://drupal.org/usability-aims, and structure http://drupal.org/node/21778. I communicated with Dries and get his go-ahead on the drafts, but I'm not sure how closely he was able to consider all parts of them at the time.

You can see something close to what I wrote at that time in this early revision: http://drupal.org/node/10250/revisions/61122/view.

My original version was, I agree, already a bit wordy. Subsequent changes - particular the last sentence that was awkwardly welded on - made it an easy target.

But what the changed version loses IMO is any sense of what's unique and particular to Drupal.

Looking back at what I wrote earlier, I'd pull these two pieces out as worth keeping in mind as we draft a new mission statement:

To enable diverse communities collectively to produce and share rich bodies of information and expression.

There is a central interest in and focus on communities and collaboration.

Marking needs work.

It looks like this never happened. Do we need to get back on track with this, or should we just close this issue?

I would love to see this go through

If we get a move on, maybe we could get a new mission statement for the launch of d.o redesign?

that would be a good combination indeed.... however, it is not known when the new redesigne will be finished

http://drupal.org/community-initiatives/redesign and http://groups.drupal.org/drupalorg-redesign-implementers track the status of that project. As you can see, there is a lot crossed off. Look for more news within a week.

There is no need to link this to the redesign project. Change the mission page whenever it is ready, whether the site is redesigned or not, or don't.

Nedjo, are you happy with the current version or do you want your comments from #18 discussed and integrated? I feel that the current version (the original one, reverted on Nov 11 2010) is OK and it looks like most people are happy with it. Shall we close this?

I am closing this issue due to inactivity. Please open it again if you wish.