Support for Drupal 7 is ending on 5 January 2025—it’s time to migrate to Drupal 10! Learn about the many benefits of Drupal 10 and find migration tools in our resource center.In #1951258: Address group competition, update path alias for the new group name, sreynen has outlined a new "See also" section for similar and nearby groups. This has been selectively deployed already and without peer review to a group that I help organize. I have a few questions:
- Is this piece of content redundant since there is already a required "What's different about this group" section?
- How will the content in the "See also" section be updated as new similar groups are formed?
- Where will content in the "See also" section be displayed?
While I'm not opposed to the idea of a "See also" section, I'd like it to be removed from the Greater Los Angeles Drupal group that it has been prematurely deployed to until it has been openly discussed and peer reviewed.
For what it's worth, I think these two pieces of content are redundant. I don't mind which section "wins" but it makes sense to me that adding unnecessary redundancy makes for more work. I think that either the "See also" section should be eliminated or the "What's different" section should be removed from the group submission guidelines.
Also, how will this static content be updated over time as new similar or nearby groups are formed? There are several support requests that I've opened in the groups.drupal.org issue queue that remain unanswered. Based on my experience, I'm very concerned that adding more bureaucracy and manual work such as this "See also" section puts additional burden on an already strained system. It's great that one day this information will be programmatically updated the way similar projects are displayed on Drupal.org project pages, but we're not there yet.
Finally, I think the current placement of the "See also" section must be revisited. It is currently in the content top region. If I'm not mistaken, third-party search engines will index the "See also" section as content and display other group names in their results for searches related to Greater Los Angeles Drupal. I propose that it be moved to the content bottom (next to where the "What's different" section is) or the sidebar.
This last point occupies a strange space is it touches on both content management of groups.drupal.org and the governance of sovereign groups. As governance issues fall outside the purvey of the groups.drupal.org administrators, I wouldn't object if the issue of placement of the "See also" section was broken out into a new issue and moved to the CWG issue queue.
Comments
Comment #1
sreynen CreditAttribution: sreynen commentedThe medium term plan on this, as mentioned in the resolution of the initial "Downtown LA" group moderation, is to make it entirely automated. As we don't yet have the data necessary to automate it, i.e. group geodata, we're limited to a manual solution for now. The only reason we're doing this at all before it's automated is that the rival LA group maintainers don't trust each other to write neutral descriptions.
I think that covers 1 and 2. I suspect the answer to 3 will change at the same time this is automated, but for now we're limited in how a static admin-edited block can be positioned relative to user-edited panels. I tried placing it exactly where the old content was, but didn't find a way. Contributions to that end are welcome.
Anyone is also welcome to move issues to CWG.
I'm not sure what else to do in this issue, so marking as "needs review."
Comment #2
christefano CreditAttribution: christefano commentedsreynen, what happens if you turn the "See also" content into an unordered list and put it next to the "New groups" block?
If this technical problem can't be solved, I'd appreciate it if you would remove the "See also" text from the content top region, at which point I'll be glad to move this to the CWG issue queue.
Comment #3
christefano CreditAttribution: christefano commentedsreynen, do you plan to respond to #2? Since you said contributions are welcome, I'm curious to see if implementing the idea I proposed is both technically possible and equitable to all involved.
Comment #4
christefano CreditAttribution: christefano commentedsryenen, in #8 at https://drupal.org/node/1951258#comment-7307820 you said:
As this hasn't happened as described, if it can't be applied to all groups then I'd like to see the "See also" block removed ASAP.
Comment #5
sreynen CreditAttribution: sreynen commentedTo be clear, the plan we've outlined in a few different places is to apply similar functionality to all groups when that can be automated. Until it can be automated, it's applied on an as-needed basis manually. I do not have time to manually add a "See also:" section to every group. I do have time to add it to groups where it seems especially important for the wider community, and I believe the Downtown LA/GLAD group falls in this category. I understand you disagree.
As the CWG is now involved, I think the best way to resolve this disagreement is to wait and see what they advise.
Comment #6
christefano CreditAttribution: christefano commentedComment #7
gdemetClosing out this issue as there have been no updates for three years, and this particular issue actually looks like a groups content feature, not a community policy.
Comment #8
christefano CreditAttribution: christefano as a volunteer commentedThanks for clarifying, gdemet. Sending back to the groups.drupal.org issue queue.
Comment #9
apadernoThe only development done on groups.drupal.org is to replace it. The plan seems to migrate it into drupal.org, as described in #2590497: [meta] Proposal to migrate groups into Drupal.org.