Landscapeideas.com - new showcase site in Drupal

I enabled the images. The promotion goes by the schedule, now, so I didn't do that.

Michelle

I was going to suggest that this get added to the Case Studies book, but I see that *that* area of the handbooks needs some love. I would love it if add1sun shared thoughts on this from the Documentation team perspective.

/me going to look to see if there's a ticket re case studies organization.

I have gone ahead and added this to the Success Stories area of the handbooks, which seems to be where the vast majority of case studies are being placed. http://drupal.org/success-stories

Re front page, I thought we had a more open, more active policy, but it seems there's a strict schedule again (which I've already opined about).

You can't edit it for a couple reasons. 1) It's a forum post. Because editing and deleting are tied together with forum posts, you need to be maintainer to edit them. 2) It's got images which means it's not set to filtered HTML. If you want to make changes, just write them up and get a maintainer to edit it.

As for the front page, see:

http://drupal.org/node/281920

Michelle

Kieran (amazon) just sent out a request for case studies on behalf of the Drupal Association to all development companies in the DA CRM, so this is an active and relevant topic. Check your email.

My feeling is that high profile sites always should be considered for FP, and that others without name recognition but solid case studies could be promoted via a fresh FP that links to 3-5 case studies, positioning them (in a marketing sense).

(In the end, my belief is that we want 3-5 new FP posts a day, including well-done case studies, but this view is not governing FP policies. What I suggest here is a compromise. If you wanted, you might consider finding some other recent case studies and write a post designed for a FP highlight of them, what industries they're in, and what kinds of challenges they answered.)

Don't know why it was still sitting there but it's been more than 24 hours since the last post so I went ahead and promoted it.

Michelle

Oh... Ugh... I promoted it but it's probably on page 10. I didn't notice this was a case study from October. . The date would have to be changed to get it to the top, I guess... But that messes with the historical accuracy. I honestly don't know how they're handling that. Will have to ask Amazon.

Michelle

Sorry, I couldn't get an answer on whether the post date should be changed when promoting it and I need to get to bed. Someone else will have to take this over.

Michelle

So I'm just the new guy here, but if the publication date is what determines where it appears on the home page, I would have no objection to changing it, as long as there's a note in italics at the beginning of the case study that says when it was originally written. It probably wouldn't hurt to have a stated policy about this.

Ideally, case studies should probably be promoted within a couple of weeks of publication, but it looks like this one may have fallen through the cracks. While it's not the kind of site that's typical showcase material, I think it does address an under-represented Drupal market.

Looking back over the case study, I'd suggest something like the following:

Editor's Note: This case study was originally published on October 16, 2008. Since that time, several of the modules listed in the article, as well as Drupal core, have had newer versions released.

dheeer, after reading the comment you added, it sounds like since the site launched, you've also built a number of related sites for the same client as part of a Drupal multi-site installation. Given that this particular case study has been listed in the handbook pages for quite some time, and the material on landscapeideas.com is probably too outdated to promote to the home page without a significant re-write anyway, what do you think about the idea of writing a new case study that talks about all the different sites as part of a single project?

Multisite implementations are always a hot topic of interest in the Drupal community, and an article that talks about that would probably be of more interest than just another story on a single site. Showcase sites that get promoted to the home page should be "special" in some way; the more special the better.

One has to understand that there is a history behind this. I don't want to take names at this moment but just so that it goes in record, one drupal assoc member even went to the extend to validate the work done with client. Client even approved this to go on front page. It was months ago. With so much done why did the story still not make it to front page. I even wrote to Dries in this matter to get his viewpoint.

There is no process on the front page publishing. Who's who and who decides what gets on frontpage. If one person or webmaster decides to check with client and second person decides "write the story again" and third person says - "upgrade the site" and fourth says something else, I hope there is documented evidence that this is being done with everyone regardless of any bias.

Material on landscapeideas is not outdated because we wrote late. It was in fact one of the first few Drupal 6 case studies.

@roshan_shah - I'm new to the site maintainer team, so the only information I have to work with is what's posted here in the issue queue. I do, however, know several members of the Drupal Association, and will touch base with them to get some additional context and see if they know why this story wasn't promoted to the front page last fall, when the information in it was more current.

I agree with you that the process of getting material promoted to the front page isn't as streamlined or transparent as it could be. One of my personal goals is to help develop an open review process that will allow site maintainers to work with news story and case study authors to ensure that stories that get promoted meet established editorial guidelines, and that stories get published on a more defined and less "ad hoc" schedule, especially after the redesign gets implemented.

George,

I understand your situation. Its a clear case of Senior Site Administrators taking hands off in this matter. This webmaster issue queue is regularly looked at by everyone but there is a strange *keep mum* followed here and its important for me to know the policy in getting the story published to frontpage and also what took them so long to get it up despite this being one of the first few Drupal 6 case studies. If there is a different forum where this dialogue can be continued I'd like to know. I still think this issue needs more clarity though.

Roshan

Since this issue has been superseded by the newer case study, and is no longer relevant, I'm going to mark this as "duplicate". If any other site maintainer thinks a different status is more appropriate, feel free to change it.

I still think http://drupal.org/node/322082#comment-1766886 needs a reply

@roshan_shah: I suggest you speak to Amazon directly.

Michelle

@Michelle : Appreciate your suggestion. Already did that long time ago. Here is some background and I would like this to stay published. Amazon himself sent email to client in 2008 to validate the story and despite client confirmation this was ( I strongly believe it was done purposefully) sidelined. Not sure if he or anyone in Drupal Association is assigned responsibility of doing such email/phone validations for every case study. If this was done in capacity of 'Drupal Association', I would like to know the process that is followed for everyone - as simple as that. If not Amazon or Dries, it maybe someone else who can reply to this who is speaking in authorative terms for 'Drupal Association'.

We had 'Organization Membership' at Drupal Association and asked some direct questions at the highest level to association, while our membership was active. We even sponsored 'Boston DrupalCon'. I have followed all diplomatic options thus far seeking clarity from few people in association but either there is no reply or replies are shoddy. Obviously, we stopped sponsoring Conferences and even didn't renew our membership for a long list of reasons that go beyond this case study type of matter.

While it doesn't matter now that Landscapeideas - one of the first few Drupal 6 case study content did not make it to front page and I am very well aware that there are some experienced people helping out Dheeraj to fine tune the new case study content, it still does matter for anyone and everyone that there is some clear process outlined.

Roshan, the Drupal association does not control the content of Drupal.org. Stop involving the Drupal association in decisions you know they are not responsible for. This has been explained to you many times, over several years. You are simply trying to escalate decisions, or lack of decisions, you disagree with.

There are 125 maintainers for Drupal.org and any two of them could have promoted your company's post to the front page.

Site maintainers are promoted for their good judgment, willingness to help with Drupal.org, and trustworthiness. Site maintainers should feel free to contact me if they have any questions.

As far as I'm aware, there is no policy that a Drupal Association board member validate the authenticity of every drupal.org case study, but I'm sure that Amazon had his reasons for doing so in this case. If you've talked directly to Amazon about this matter, then hopefully he's explained those to you. I do know that it is within the mission of the Drupal Association to promote the Drupal project, and that in that context, Amazon did solicit the Drupal Association membership and others for case study material last fall, much of which ended up being promoted to the home page.

As to why this story wasn't promoted when it was originally posted last fall, it looks to me like there simply wasn't enough interest at the time among the site maintainers to promote the story to the front page. As the Site Maintainer's guide states, stories should be reviewed by more than one site maintainer for front page suitability before they are promoted to the front page. If the story is deemed interesting/well-written enough for home page publication, then usually more than one site maintainer will say so. If not, they won't, and it looks like that's what happened here, at least based on the information I'm seeing here in the issue queue. As far as I can tell, no one acting on behalf of the Drupal Association had anything to do with the fact that this wasn't promoted.

It's important to keep in mind that not every case study or news story gets front page promotion, even if the submitter follows the procedures outlined on the front page schedule; stories need to be both well-written and of broad interest to the Drupal community to be promoted, and it's the role of the site maintainers to make that judgment.

While I understand that may not be an adequate explanation for you, it's all I have to offer, and my advice would be for you to focus your efforts on making sure future case studies are as interesting, compelling, and well-written as possible instead of continuing to focus on perceived slights that may have occurred in the past.

it looks to me like there simply wasn't enough interest at the time among the site maintainers to promote the story to the front page.

You are on to something...

I've never looked at the site in question before. But the one thing that it yelled at me when I did so today was: BOOOOORRRING.

It was 100% correct to not promote it, it doesn't help Drupal's cause.

I can find examples of ones that hit the front page that has more boring site and content. Here is one http://drupal.org/node/386278 - This was even more boring and more of promoting the company's services. I didn't even find too much of it in frontpage schedule or history except Kieran promoting it and other site-reviewers having no comments.

http://drupal.org/node/386286 - Webmaster queue
http://drupal.org/node/280488/revisions/461230/view

I don't buy into an idea of going around validating with clients if at all the content was not fit for front-page. Its a bad practice and hence I wanted to know who makes this decision and in what capacity. Since when did Drupal.org team get into business of looking into client validations, business processes of other companies and customer satisfaction surveys? It may even be outright illegal do to this UNLESS there is a process documented and reviewed from all aspects.

I agree that getting on frontpage is a privilege and not a right but it can't be flagrantly abused because there are thousands of developers and hundreds of shops who would be impacted if people start calling around clients on every case study even before it is considered for being promoted.

Roshan

I am locking this issue. Kieran replied me and he will be in contact with you.