Add sidebar link to Community initiatives

IMO we should just link to Patch Spotlight 2.0. There's a lot more going on than just one patch, so let's just link there and be done with it.

I agree.

Here's a patch to bingo module to make this just a normal link. It also moves it up in the list so it's more visible. (also because it looks silly underneath a heading)

There are some nice aspects of this page though that it'd be nice to preserve on the new one. For example, that awesome graphic, and the general testing instructions. This page also was good for ensuring that patch authors took the time to write out testing instructions and synopses of their patches. Let's brainstorm about ways to bring these elements into the 2.0 page as well.

As webchick mentioned, one of the useful things about the "patch spotlight" was encouraging folks to write up a summary and test strategy for reviewers, before it will be featured. Can we continue the tradition and link directly to a comment on the issue that offers this info, assuming the initial issue does not?

I also like the idea of concentrating eyeballs on one patch most in need of reviews, so I'd support featuring an actual "spotlight" patch somewhere near the top of the page.

Did the single spotlight actually accomplish anything, though? The patches that were there recently were the hook_file patch and the DST patch. Both were there for months, sometimes with no activity in that time. It certainly didn't help hook_file to get in any faster.

Spotlight 2.0 seems to me to be a "todo" list for the core dev team; at least that's how I've been using it. It offers a better at-a-glance of current dev trends and places to focus than a "let's throw 1000 hours of random people at a patch and hope something happens", which, well, didn't happen. :-)

I would argue that once hook_file's patch spotlight actually had a synopsis and in it (http://drupal.org/node/132970/revisions/view/293880/352541), it greatly expedited its journey into core. Of course, since I wrote that, you could argue that "core committers being forced to add a synopsis to monster patches greatly expedites things into core." :P Still though; it helps tremendously, especially on those 2+ year old, 200+ reply issues.

And I do think patch spotlight had a positive effect on the DST patch. mfb was kind of running the show alone there for a good long while; once it got promoted, DamZ, sun, and others showed up to help. However, that could also just be coincidence and have nothing to do with its promotion there, I don't know. But the activity in the issue *did* seem to pick up around the time that it was featured.

In terms of its effectiveness though, the problem with patch spotlight 1.0 has always been that it only highlights a single patch. Figure that we have 400 people who might contribute to core in some way. If 398 of those people don't know anything about PHP date handling functions, they don't have a lot to offer beyond testing out the patch, which they might do like once. Back when Patch Spotlight was featuring smaller bug fixes and stuff, we used to churn through 2-3 issues a week sometimes with the "throw 1000 random hours at a problem" approach.

I think we can still do that by just organizing a proper section for "small bug fixes that won't take much brain space" ala please-review-my-patch or, as mfb suggests, a "Current hot priority patch(es)" section, which is stuff that's basically ready but needs reviewers thrown at it, as opposed to other things on the list which might be 'active' right now and have no code associated with them at all (while I would argue these issues have no place on "patch spotlight" but like you said, it helps organize a global "todo" list for core).

It would be good to make clear on this page which items are active core "todos" and which are actual patches in need of review, with synopsis and list of things that need to be tested.

I definitely think the combination of writing synopsis and list of things to test plus being prominently featured is what helped the time zone patch get needed reviews, improvements and ultimately get committed. Otherwise I don't know what else did it! I also think there's an educational value in a patch spotlight (whether it's one patch or a few) that will be hard to measure, in terms of creating an accessible entry point for newer members of the community to read up on how the patches work and thus gaining better understanding of php date handling (or whatever) and drupal itself.

Subscribing.

I'm going to go ahead and close this. No action happened on this, and in the meantime, we've created http://drupal.org/community-initiatives/drupal-core, which http://drupal.org/patch/spotlight points to.

I'm reopening this since the new Community Initiatives link should just be a top-level menu item in the Contributors links block. "Patch spotlight" will scare a lot of non-coders. In the meantime, we've added the CI link to the block and changed the patch spotlight title to "Core initiatives."

New patch attached to remove the Patch spotlight and add a Community Initiatives link at the top of the block.

/me beats head. Patch attached this time.

We really need an easier way to get to this useful book. Please review and implement.

changing title and bumping. the lack of this link basically forced us to make a FP post during the sprint so the doc team folks could easily find where we were working. this is a really simple change that will make it *much* easier for people to contribute.

I'd much prefer it if we linked to the Drupal Core Improvements page instead of the semi-obsolete Patch Spotlight page. As far as I can tell, the information on that page is linked to in the Drupal Core Improvements page.

Angie asked in the development mailing list "how the community initiatives pages are 'kneecapping' existing contributors?". dww replied, saying:

"For starters, because they're impossible to find. Maybe it's because it's after 4am and I've been rolling update.module patches[1] for the last few hours, but I just spent literally 10 minutes clicking around the handbooks, and I can't find these pages anywhere. That "Current Drupal core initiatives" link in the Contributor links block? Useless. No where under "Contribute", nor "Documentation", etc, etc. I only spent that long clicking around because not even googling for "site:drupal.org core initiatives" turns up anything (at least not in the first few pages).

How is this helping anyone if I can't even find the pages to add one for update module? Much less how is anyone else going to help me with update module if they can't find the pages, either?"

He concluded by saying that he only found the page through Google.

If a notable developer in the community can't find the page, a potential rockstar probably can't either. This is a reasonable change and we should implement it ASAP.

Agreed too, obviously. I've been pushing the community initiatives section for the past few months as the central place for core development (and other community-led) efforts to be centralized. The current situation of "abusing" the old patch spotlight link to point there is very silly, but I only did it because this patch has been sitting here since December and didn't appear to be going anywhere anytime soon.

I can't really mark this RTBC because I don't have a local drupal.org-esque dev environment. But the patch looks fine to me and removes a bunch of silly cruft.

I tweaked this to use sentence case and relative URL, which the rest of the block uses. Btw the head version of drupalorg moved this code from bingo.module to drupalorg_project.module, so this patch only applies on the DRUPAL-6--1 branch.

Reviewed, tested, committed, and deployed on d.o.

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!