What I love/hate (cross out whatever suits you) about this community is its (in)-ability to answer the questions I feel are damn important to me.
Somebody wrote "UNIX is user-friendly; it's just picky about its friends!"
Most of you probably had your struggle with M$ Office and got an answer to the question you never asked (somebody pointed out that the present school system - regardless of country - as the prime source of this) with its stupid little avatar trying to be ingratiating.
Since Drupal is, probably, beyond what its inventor thought it ever would be, it tries to explore new frontiers with the power of all the the user/developer brain-power behind it. In order to understand this community (or any other community for that matter) one needs to harmonize with the community which in some cases is a daunting task.
If you're a newbee don't be intimidated by this.
Keep on searching the Drupal site and don't forget to google for it also until you're sure you've done a reasonable job trying to find the answer. Then ask!
And when despite of this, you don't get an answer, be patient and try to understand your problem from another perspective (the late prof. Reg. Revans was such an exemplary man in this sense). The power of OSS is in all of us who still like to be independent thinkers and not only waiting for the next upgrade which supposedly will fix all of the previous bugs (while introducing roughly the same number of new ones) but also pointing out/doing something about them.
The people coding Drupal and the modules do it without asking for money. I believe they do it basically because, in the end, they want a better world. It sounds maybe too grand but why do we share? Making another fellow human feeling happy makes you feel good too. Doesn't it?
May the force be with you!
Comments
Perhaps.
What I am finding with the community is that there seems to be increasingly little communication with the user base for upgrades and so on, and that's further made worse with the way that modules and core Drupal are maintained separately.
This last upgrade did add a lot of functionality, but some of the 'functionality' reminds me of 'buggy'.
For example, making me wait longer to load a content creation page for AJAX seems like someone got a bit too AJAX happy. Reorganizing something so that it looks more organized is fine and good, but making it a pain to load an AJAX script every time I want to add a node seems like overkill. There's a difference between 'cool' and 'usability', and I'm not sure where Drupal in general is heading - but it seems to be leaning to, 'cool, look what we can do' instead of 'maybe we shouldn't do that because it's a pain to use repetitively'. On smaller sites, this functionality is probably nice, but on larger sites there's no way I have found to turn it off. Sounding off in a marketing thread gained me a 'nobody told you to upgrade'. Huh?
There has to be a balance for Drupal development and usability, and I'm not sure it's being addressed. If Drupal is to be used like a weblog for people, the updates are fine and dandy... but the power of Drupal that I appreciated has been it's scalability and usability. I think these were negatively impacted with the 4.7 update. My clients are asking for a 4.7 update, and I'm telling them 'no' at this point.
There's a reason that incremental builds are good. I didn't try the RCs because of the production code I'm working with, so I figured the release would have been better. Small moves, not big moves, are probably better in the future... the Drupal community is strong, it would make sense to keep it strong. Educating the users is good. Educating the developers is equally important.
KnowProSE.com
OpenDepth.com
Drupal did not 'used to be a
Drupal did not 'used to be a weblog for people'. Drupal was a community web board. The AJAX that was added was demanded by the user community. This is a continuation of the UI improvements that were started in the forums back in the updates from 4.4 to 4.5. These discussions have continued in the forums, the development lists, etc. If you do not like the ajax you can turn off ajax in your browser or you can disable the elements you don;t like in your theme (i a different thread). Unlike you, I find these enhancements a phenominal usability improvement as do the people I support. They are bugging me to update their sites first. Keiren Lal of CivicSpace has worked to perform a number of usability studies (the results of them have often ended on the front page of Drupal.org) that has provided feedback to the developers. Others have provided feedback. I have provided feedback and I do not code. You can see the results of various discussions on the development list archives about how much or how little to include and how to do it in a useful manner.
That's an interesting perspective. Core is core. It gets attention and development and is the engine around which all the contrib modules leverage api's and features. Contrib modules are contributed to scratch an itch for an indivdual who then shares that solution. There are hundreds of modules. Some being rendered obsolete as new Drupal core versions come out, some benefiting from developers of various other modules meeting and collaborating to combine into something much better from what they learned in the first go around. Features that prove universally desired and usful being migrated into core.... That is the purpose and point of contributed modules. I am unsure how you would want to see this changed or how it would be posible.
Here is the personal roadmap of the developers. If you want to follow along with the direction Drupal is going in then I suggest you subscribe to the development list and audit the traffic and conversation as I and others do.
Each release of Drupal tries to incorporate all that was learned from the previous release and include better and improved methods of using Drupal for both developers, site admins and users alike. If you have specific ideas and/or improvements then you need to get involved and learn how to present these ideas to the development community. It certainly is posible and a brief audit of the development list traffic will supply you with ample proof that folks are able to disagree and still often work together to come up with a workable and elegant solution.
As I say and repeat in my signature, "Test site, always start with a test site". You have to do this to decide how to use the next version and tailor it to your needs and your clients needs. Only with involvement will people be able to actively influence change.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
You read only part of what I wrote and took it out of context.
The AJAX stuff is too top-heavy. It's klunky for rapid content creation. And that wouldn't be on a developer list, it's a matter of usability. So, please read in context - for people who update data once a day (weblog for people), what is there is nice. For people who deal with much more than that, it's kludgey without a way to turn off the AJAX and have things workable. I believe that may be a theme issue, not sure.
And as far as being on the Devlists... well, I was on it. Too high traffic, too little data (people don't subscribe to just one email list; there are other email lists I am involved on). Frankly, it seems odd that all of the emails are about a content management system aren't... in a content management system. Maybe if developers used the interface more through online discussion instead of emails... ;-)
'Test site, always start with a test site'. Was this upgrade made to prove that point? The disparity between modules and core is quite apparent. Sure, you tell people to use a test site but... not everyone has that ability, especially those with single sites. Shouldn't Drupal itself have a core test site where modules are tested?
My constructive criticism here is that blaming the users is not the way to get things working better - small moves in releases is a good idea. I like Drupal. I want to see it work well, and be used more. And because of that, I am being critical of things because a forum full of confused users and lost module releases stuck somewhere between patch and CVS is not a way to get Drupal being used more. I'm not attacking. Rather, I am defending Drupal... the reality of the userbase should settle in sooner or later.
KnowProSE.com
OpenDepth.com
I am merely trying to
I am merely trying to provide you with some of the answers to your comments and tools and methods of how to work with the community to accomplish your goals. I do this with a lot of people. I don't mind your criticism, it was a thoughtful, well written piece. I was merely trying to respond so you weren't hanging out alone here.
No, I didn't take your comments out of context. It was evident you didn't like the AJAX method as implemented, that's all right. You can use your theme to control it's use, that is the current method to turn it off. So there is a method of control. Providing a check box to turn it off was investigated but was deemed to intrusive, clunky and crufty. This will be interesting because I don't know how to do it yet but I also have not had time to look at it. With any luck I'll be able to play with some theme's in the next two weeks.
UI is in fact discussed on a developer list as it's part of the development process. However, if you are not involved in the discussion it's a little late to change 4.7. You certainly can work to influence 4.8. Now is the time to do so.
If you want to influence the direction of the next version of Drupal, then you will need to join the development list and follow it. Read and respond as appropriate. This is what I do. Yes, there is a bit of traffic and I miss things. I do not feel obligated to read every message. I track threads and trends myself. Between my work, tech and personal email addresses, I understand volume, I think I am at around 200-500 messages a day on average.
No, everyone has the ability to build a test site. No one can claim they don't. XAMMP is a useful tool that I took the trouble to get the basics down so I can have a test site on a Flash Drive. I have an install on my local system. You can alias your domain name for your server. Contributed modules are at the whim of the contibutor or some other instrested dev who sees value in continuing the module forward. This is on purpose. There is a development list discussion right now on this. Feel free to read the archives on it. We'll see if the community has the resources (people) to make a change at this time. If not, we'll see if it happens in the next cycle.
No one here is blaming the users. None of the developers are doing this. CVS is absolutly a developer tool. Applying patches is absolutly stepping outside the bounds of what is provided by a packaged core Drupal. If you need to install a module that requires a patch because you deem you need that feature, then you need to learn a little if the modules contributor did not supply those patches. It is not going to be a requirement for module contributors to supply them, it is at their own discretion. This policy is not because anyone wants to prevent people from using Durpal, it's because changing your Drupal core code is something you need to understand when you do it. If you do not understand or are unwilling to learn, then if things break you will have a problem and people will be less able to help you with your non-standard install. Not mandating that volunteers do something that most won't (or haven't been willing to do historically) do is a sane policy of not chasing the bulk of the code contributors away. Without the code contributors people like me (who does not know php) would have a problem.
I don't understand this sentence.
I am the userbase. You are the userbase. Unpaid support volunteers are the userbase. Unpaid doc contributor volunteers are the userbase. Unpaid developers volunteers are the userbase. People paid to deploy Drupal per contract or job are the user base. People who use Drupal and do not contribute back are the user base.
I am not paid to support people yet I do. You do as well. I have seen your posts and replies to peoples questions. All of this relies on unpaid volunteers and contributors. We cannot mandate support in a certain way. We can try and nourish people who will become the next generation of support people, who will contribute documentation to drupal.org, who will contribute QA, UI, code, testing, administration... what have you back to the community.
I am trying to explain how you can influence the items or changes you wish to see. To provide you with the tools to accomplish your goals. To become a more effective advocate and contributor within the community.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
OK, fine.
The userbase comment:
If the userbase is expected to increase, you probably don't want to have them subscribing to a developer list to change things.
And as far as AJAX - well, the theme I'm using (Slurpee) doesn't work when I turn the AJAX off. Probably a theme issue, but because the node table got broken out into node_revisions as well, I'm off reworking other pieces of code for clients that I ain't getting paid for.
Drupal 4.8? Hell, I'm still trying to figure out all the changes from 4.7 as far as the way my clients use Drupal. And there are many creative uses. Again, you probably don't want users to have them subscribing to a developer list to change things. That's not a developer list, then. :-)
KnowProSE.com
OpenDepth.com
What I do...
...is follow the mailing lists with gmane.org. Point a newsreader at news.gmane.org every couple of days and spend a minute or two quickly browsing over the threads for ones of interest. You can configure your newsreader to watch certain threads or hide others etc, and your inbox doesn't fill up with email.
I can totally sympathise with following mailing lists. Lists are a great collaboration tool for the active participants, but can be information overload and too much hassle for 'lurkers'. I find NNTP and a good newsreader to be a much better interface for lurkers.
Just an idea...
--
Anton
New to Drupal? | Forum posting tips | Troubleshooting FAQ
Example Knowledge Base built using Drupal