"Where is the Drupal Community?" doesn't mention the issue queue [#1290884]

Problem

The list at http://drupal.org/community does not mention the issue queue, while that is where the Drupal Community hangs out a lot. Knowing and understanding the issue queues is essential if you want to understand how our community gets stuff done, so I think the issue queues should be the the top item in the list.

Quick proposal (to get the discussion started)

Issue Queues

Every project on drupal.org (like Drupal core, or contributed modules and themes) has its own issue queue. In the issue queue, bugs are reported and solved, new features are discussed and added, and users can request support.

Comments

Comment #1

yoroy CreditAttribution: yoroy commented 26 September 2011 at 10:22

Title:

Why doesn't "Where is the Drupal Community?" mention the issue queue?

» "Where is the Drupal Community?" doesn't mention the issue queue

Nice catch. Without wanting to drag you into a large meta discussion but this is related to http://groups.drupal.org/node/174989 :)

As for your proposed text: very good imo. Also agreed this should be at the top of the list.

Comment #2

laura s CreditAttribution: laura s commented 26 September 2011 at 12:38

I suggest this might be better brought up in #1288460: Divide "Community & Support" top level nav into Community, Support and Get Involved and/or #1288470: Create 'Community' Section, this is really a duplicate of those larger discussions of what's needed on a "community" page. That said, I see the text above as more of an orientation matter, rather than something useful when someone clicks on "community.

Comment #3

marcvangend

he/him

Dutch

Amsterdam

CreditAttribution: marcvangend commented 26 September 2011 at 13:18

Status:

Active

» Needs review

Roy and Laura, thanks for chiming in.

Large, overarching discussions about how we can do stuff completely different are very important, and I really appreciate the work that is being done there. However, IMHO that should not stop us from applying a simple yet effective improvement to the current situation.

I propose that we add my text (or an improved version) to the page now. Even if the revamped Community / Support / Get Involved pages would be ready tomorrow (which they will not), it would still be worth the effort.

Comment #4

mlncn CreditAttribution: mlncn commented 22 December 2011 at 14:11

Priority:

Normal

» Major

Agreed that the community page needs to mention issue queues, in fact i just posted a duplicate issue before finding this: #1380312: Issue queues need to be mentioned on "Where is the Drupal community?" page

My perspective and proposed language was more for the non-code issue queues. On reflection i agree with Marc's focus on the most common issue queues, but i would downplay the support role. Perhaps:

Issue Queues

Every project on drupal.org (like Drupal core, or contributed modules and themes) has its own issue queue. In the issue queue, bugs are reported and solved, new features are discussed and added, and users can request support. Non-code projects in Drupal, such as the documentation effort or this very web site and others in the drupal.org family, use dedicated initiative issue queues to aid their effective organization.

As far as i can find this listing of community initiative issue queues does not yet exist (the bold text would have the link if/when it does), but would be a very important way to orient people to our community ways and means.

Comment #5

marcvangend

he/him

Dutch

Amsterdam

CreditAttribution: marcvangend commented 22 December 2011 at 14:37

@mlncn: Thanks for moving this forward. Allow me to respond to your remarks and additions.

You have linked the words "issue queue" twice to two different pages. I like the addition of a link to http://drupal.org/node/317, but IMHO it should be more clear what the user can expect when clicking one of those links.

I agree that the support role is not the most important part of issue queues, but I do not think it should be downplayed. I have seen many new users posting support questions in the forum, hoping that the module maintainer will see it. In most cases, that is a completely unrealistic scenario. We need to tell those people that the issue queue is also for support.

As far as I'm concerned, new users are the most important audience of "Where is the Drupal Community?". For them, the non-code issues are probably way over their heads. New users are the people who "come for the code": they have a problem they want to solve. By the time they are ready to "stay for the community", they probably know their way around. Even though the sentence "Non-code projects [...] organization" is 100% true, I'm afraid that it will mostly confuse people instead of helping them.