Do we need a new(or additional) maintainer for drigg?

I wholeheartedly agree.

Wow didn't know that had been happening behind the scenes. Does this mean he will no longer develop Drigg?

Well, good luck on this one. Drigg's all one big self-contained chunk of custom code. A new maintainer will have a lot of work ahead of them to get up to speed.

I've expressed understanding for Merc's decision to build all custom components for Drigg rather than integrating with work from other projects. It can certainly lead to a better outcome. But this is where it becomes a problem, when the person who made all that code bails.

I've been following Drigg since day 1 and run a quite popular Drigg site (perhaps the most popular?). During this time, I've noticed that Merc's a great deal fussier than any of the other maintainers I've interacted with. If you ask for support, he's very careful to make sure that you need support that only he can provide. If so, he's there to help. If anyone else can help, he tells you its not his forte and points you away. I understand why he does this, of course, but it also led to me not being surprised by the big flame-out in that thread. Open source requires a great deal of flexibility and give and take. High standards are good, but not at the expense of an opportunity to collaborate.

@bflora - windy citizen is definitely the most popular Drigg site out there, and highly trafficked! Good job on that. It's amazing. How will Merc's decision to quit affect future plans you have for your site?

I've been working on mine for about 2 months, and find it both saddening and scary that Drigg is going to just drop off like that. Now I may have misunderstood what Merc said - "As of now I am no longer a Drupal developer. I won't abandon my modules and projects outright; I will keep on fixing bugs, for example. However, I won't develop new features for my modules." Does this mean he will no longer develop Drigg for newer versions of Drupal?

This is a serious issue because there are new people creating Drigg sites every day, and they probably have no idea what's going on. We really need to hear more from Merc about the future of Drigg, and what that means to all of us who run Drigg sites. Even if someone steps up to taking over Drigg, how long will it take to get things up to speed?

I don't want to add to Merc's load by e-mailing him, but if any of you get a chance to talk to him, PLEASE get him to make a statement about Drigg. Please.

Hi,

Hey, I am here, I am here.
I have just given FriendList's maintainership to somebody else. My issue queue suddenly looks a lot better.
Now, as of Drigg, what I really need is *helpers*. There are bugs that need fixing (although not many) and features that are just immensely desiderable.

I will not leave people without Drigg. Yes, development has slowed down, but it hasn't halted completely.

When Kevin and Cedric joined me, the advancement in development was _massive_.

If a new person steps in and he's so good that he becomes the maintainer de-facto, I will be totally totally happy to step down.

So, that's the story right now... help _very much_ wanted.

Bye,

Merc.

Thanks for the kind words. The Citizen is doing well. Drigg has served me well, though i've had to hack the crap out of it. I'm using the user karma system, though there's much that I don't understand. I'm using the extra voting forms, which work great, though I made my own custom buttons, which don't look that hot.

And I'm using the submission form but without URL validation, since it's got issues.

Otherwise that's all I'm using Drigg for. Not using any of the views or the category system at the moment. I'm using views + node radioactivity to list the stories on the front page and another view to list the latest stories. None of the Drigg views are being used because they were too limiting (promoting a post as soon as it reaches X votes is just not interesting enough for a site, I show the 10 hottest posts on the front page instead.)

So I'm not really worried about Drigg shutting down. My setup's working. If The Windy Citizen gets going enough to where I can hire a developer, I'll likely create a custom app to power the site rather than use Drupal, which just has too many moving pieces. I've spent 100s of dollars hiring project maintainers to fix bugs in modules that I found. I'm done checking out new third-party modules only to find that they're not up to snuff. Open source has let me get up and running, which is awesome. It's also made it hard to assemble a really quality product.

Will there be a full release 6x version by next week ?
Is there any real problem with the current 'beta' or will upgrade from it be difficult?

+ subscribe

I have developing couple sites using drigg as backbone, one of them is more than 50% ready, so it would be great to hear that drigg will stay long term project...

For Merc and other developers: there are MUCH more people who are using Drupal modules, also Drigg than those who are writing issues or offensive comments. It just not anyone is able/has a desire to help develop. Drigg is definitelly a great project without real alternatives.

Hi,

The only thing that it's stopping Drigg as a release is a problem with the user karma. There are also other minor bugs... but I don't thing they are show stoppers.

Merc.

also... please integrate Drigg into Drupal as much as possible - CCK, Pathauto problems and so on...

Hi Merc.

what is the "problem with the user karma"?
and is there a list of the other minor bugs?

thank you

Hi,

Is it possible to start a bounty to finish Drigg fast ?!

Thanks.

Hello Merc,
You have given a really very useful module to Drupal community. Now people are eagerly waiting for your NEXT BIG SUPPORT to the community in the form of Drigg 6.x version. Hope it will see the light very soon!!!
Thanks for your hard work!!

Hi,

Since the module has a new maintainer, I would think this bug should be closed?
And... I am no longer a software developer, people. But I must say, thank you for your great support and for being there. And THANK YOU to the new maintainer!

Merc.

New maintainer ? Where ? ;-)

Nice to see you again Merc !

so... until we do not have "final" version, or something similar to replace Drigg, lets keep our fingers crossed

This new maintainer is a big joke, come on, he comes from nowhere, says nothing here or on drigg-code.com and hasn't done anything in CVS. How should I think about that? Does it gives me any hope? I'd prefer Merc not to hand his module to a ghost!

Say something, come on new maintainer you don't have 5 minutes to post ANYTHING?

Hi,

I don't think the new maintainer will do anything.
We have to figure something else out.

I have the feeling I might have to step in once more... but I will definitely need help to work through the backlog.

Merc.

We can say honestly drigg is working, I have one in D5 and one in D6 and I fixed a few things talked about in the issues, such as CSS optimize, but overall it's working even if the D6 version generates more errors in watchdog than D5.
Of course what you shouldn't do Merc is try to do like before, adding buddy things and others which are not really necessary for most uses because first thing is to get enough users to sustain the site by itself, this takes months, so the buddy/friend stuff is not important and can be done with other modules.

Cheers,

Welcome merc!!
It would be very nice to see you once again for Drigg6.

Hi,

Is it possible to start a chip in to pay Merc for the time he would spend on Drigg again ?

I guess that many people are using Drigg now, so everybody should help !

Bye.

I still haven't finished my drigg projecgt, because of some silly bugs and features missing:(

Willing to chip in IF project is alive again (6.x)

Hi,

The problem is that even with chipping in, in my experience, we can get up to $3/hour max -- and at the moment I am amazingly strapped with cash, and have 0 free time. Plus, I have forgotten a lot of the existing codebase...

But, at the same time, Karma and EVF have been taken over and seem healthy (are they).

I am not so sure.

Merc.

This has been an interesting thread .. similar to several others (see below):

-- http://drupal.org/node/528518
-- http://drupal.org/node/1346862
-- http://drupal.org/node/468182
-- http://drupal.org/node/357941
-- http://drupal.org/node/1238526

Given all that I have read in various threads, it does seem like it is probably a better idea to go for a re-write rather than try to keep the drigg code going, without its core developer. I would like to play a part in a replacement project, but lack sufficient experience (in drupal) to lead a project like this. But what I lack in experience, I probably make up for in enthusiasm, and I am not a novice programmer.

Any very experienced drupal gurus here ready to play leader/mentor for a drigg replacement project?

I have to say that drigg was faulty in its design, because the content was duplicated, so now ater 3 years my database is 1GB (after I delete cache) and it should be about half that size.. Drigg introduced its own table for saving scoop content, but it is also saved normally as node, so with dozens of thousands scoops, now big trouble arises..

I installed boost, but still it is such a burden on mysql.. I have two drigg installed each with dozens of thousands scoops..

Also note that google doesn't send as much visits as it did before to these sites.. Just like web directories were successful and then got slapped by google, it happened too with digg like, about end of 2010, so 2011 was poor, but still I get a few thousands daily visits, I'm lucky, others don't have that much luck and now get only traffic from yahoo/bing :-)

to alliax: forger about everything related to drigg - it was flawed form the begining, as the original creator was to cocky to do something which would be understandable not only for him, but for someone else
right now there are plenty of modules, which can recreate 95% of drigg capabilities

PlayfulWolf, please, do give us some examples of modules one could select, and how (high level description) of how one might go about this .. Thanks in advance

userpoints ecosystem instead of user karma
fivestar, vote up/down, rate, plus1 or any other for voting
link field for url, scoop as cck/field'ed node
views with plugins, such as radioactivity and other for aranging scoops

the only feature I don't know - to get text/description/picture from site you link to
other small eye-candies and form controls are available also as separate modules

thats all?

Well one which was very unique and important to drigg was the automatic voting system with "fake" users.
This I used and I'm still using it, it is vital to make the site look alive, because un like on digg.com users and visitors of most digg like don't vote except on their own scoops..
So having this voting automatic system with a pool of a dozen fake users looks great for diversity on the homepage, and it makes some activity on the site, that's great for starting a new site, but also in the life of the site, this system adds up with the real users votes.

yes, so this chunk of code could be an external module, also - I am not so much experienced in rules module, but there should be tools to build voting "scripts"