The "contributor cloud" posted at http://drupal.org/files/d7-contributor-cloud-huge.png (and linked to in http://drupal.org/drupal-7-released and elsewhere) is a great graphic, but it's generating complaints that it does not accurately represent the contributions different people made to Drupal 7.

We have more important things to deal with than the relative sizes of people's names. I therefore propose we replace this graphic with one where the names are all the same size. I've attached a version that does this. This was made with the software at http://www.tagxedo.com (same as the current graphic).

Although the people whose names appear large in the original graphic certainly have all contributed tons of work to Drupal 7, some of the people whose names are smaller contributed at least as much (like "webchick" and "dries", for starters....) For a variety of reasons, the number of commits your name is mentioned in isn't an accurate measurement of the work you did. And the software cannot include everyone's name anyway; some names which should be huge aren't even listed currently, presumably because they don't fit (for example, "dww" is a top D7 contributor but his name does not seem to be in http://drupal.org/files/d7-contributor-cloud-huge.png at all).

The attached graphic was made by feeding Tagxedo 519 names (everyone who had at least 2 mentions in commit messages), and it looks like about 280 got used in the final image - that's pretty decent. By making all names the same size, people looking at the graphic will focus on the sheer number of contributors to D7 (which is the truly amazing statistic), not the specific names. And the resulting image has finer detail than the other one so it looks more like the Druplicon also :)

Although the cat is somewhat out of the bag, I propose we replace the current image with this one and use it going forward.

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Comments

JacobSingh’s picture

Nice, and well written. It doesn't look as good, but that can be iterated and fixed. While I don't thinks this strikes at the heart of the problem (computerized recognition systems are better at promoting competition than inspiration), it might help to avoid some of the bad feelings some people might be having.

fgm’s picture

Nice idea, especially if a clearer font can be used (Helvetica Neue to match the D7 styling rules ?)

David_Rothstein’s picture

Yeah, switching to Helvetica Neue (or at least something that looks more like it) is probably a good idea.

What else doesn't look as good? The colors? (In theory this version is matched to the actual colors of the Druplicon, but the original looks more vibrant - maybe there was an option somewhere to affect that.)

naught101’s picture

why not just do it with a smaller ratio of largest:smallest? the current one looks like it's about 10:1 or 12:1. Maybe something like 2:1 or 3:1 would be more appropriate? Also, the color randomisation in the original is nice. makes it easier to read.

Looks like the new one has more names? That's always gonna be a good thing...

lizzjoy’s picture

Status: Needs review » Closed (won't fix)

Hi @David_Rothstein, this issue is being closed due to inactivity. If you or anyone would like to open it again to move it forward, please do.