The realm beyond groups.drupal.org
public
group: New York City
litwol - Tue, 2008-08-05 14:06
I've taken the liberty to research what is available to groups outside of http://groups.drupal.org and here i will list some things that i've found.
- larger groups, richer websites, more control
Ical feed
please don't
before you move forward on this, please re-read the past debates that have happened.
I know that people in IRC have pointed out to you that fracturing the group with a separate site would cause much grumbling, I just want to echo those points and ask that you think about and address all of the potential problems before moving forward with what will be a very divisive action.
Seconded...
(See you can still use "board" language here too!)
This has already been debated ad naseum and voted down. The group has decided to stay at g.d.o, and that decision should be respected and followed.
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
Decisions are Written in Pencil
Eric,
You and I have butted heads numerous times over the years. We simply don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, and that's fine. But I don't think it's fair of you to tell litwol what to do, or what not to do in this case. Yes, I brought up the idea to move away from GDO a while ago. It got voted down. Fine. That was then. Someone else wants to bring it up now, they have that right to do so. They weren't there for the discussion, but that doesn't mean that their point is any less valid. Simply saying "no, we discussed this before and said no" is basically telling a newer member that they have less value than us old folk, since all of our decisions are set in stone. Decisions that we make are written in pencil. If the time comes that we need to change something for whatever reason, we can just erase and rewrite. No harm. No foul. And if this comes down to it again and it gets voted down again, then fine. But it's still written in pencil for when and if there is a time where a change is necessary.
Mike
i'm in favor of discussing it as many times as people want
I'm not telling anyone what to do. I'm suggesting that people who do things in the name of the group simply ask for opinions first and then take the opinions of the group seriously. Then, do what ever you want. [This is how I handled the last drupal camp, and have been handling the process of looking for a date for the next one]
I have not said that since it was discussed once we can't discuss it again. I have pointed people to the past debate so we can all move forward with the discussion from a common starting point.
I just think that it would be a good idea to have the discussion first, before wasting money on a domain that you might never use.
Anyone is free to start their own site, but if they want it to be an integral part of this community, it might not get used if the community is not comfortable with the idea. The community is more likely to be comfortable with the idea if we've had the chance to give input.
I don't mind people bringing up ideas as many times as they think is useful.
This entire debate is about renewing the process where people communicate the idea to the group before they take action in the name of the group.
The idea is that anyone is able to organize an event or site or donation in the name of the group, but only after seeking input from everyone. If you want to ignore that input, go for it, sometimes the majority of opinions are wrong, but there should be an agreement that we all discuss things here before doing them, and after getting input we post our decision so the group knows what to expect.
I'm looking to increase the level of communication, not shut it down.
Use the Site for a Mock-Up
You might want to go ahead and use that site develop a "mock-up" of what you envision there, and use that to go back to moshe (or whoever's in charge of gdo) for what you want for the group page. Then all the groups can benefit from the innovation.
My $0.02. (I remember when old typewriters had a cent sign above the 2. Who decided it needed to be an @ on PC's? Of course, e-mails would have needed something else.)
Aaron Winborn
Drupal Multimedia (my book, coming in September!)
AaronWinborn.com (my blog, all about Drupal)
Advomatic (my work)
Drupal developers need a place to play together
From "Please explain" thread... Regarding the creation of http://nycdrupal.org, I agree that clarification needs to be made about what the site is, how it is administered, and who owns it.
However, I think that it is generally a boon to the group to have a sandbox or webspace where developers can experiment with all the cool tools that drupal offers. Let's face it, there's a limited amount of stuff you can do with the gdo site, but an infinite number of possibilities for http://nycdrupal.org.
The site should make it clear that it is a sandbox and that the main discussion is happening at http://groups.drupal.org/new-york-city. I was not too impressed with the liveliness of the discussion/debate on the LA site. Chx is clearly doing some interesting things with the Hungary site.
An individual from HostMySite http://www.hostmysite.com/, a fairly large webhost has been asking me how HostMySite can help help the DrupalNYC community. He's basically offered a free server to the group. I would imagine that a hosting company could coordinate a means by which the domain and hosting service are controlled by a group and not just one individual.
Redirect mentined on another post
I wouldn't be oppsed to a shorter url redirecting to the main groups page. This URL is pretty long. As I've said in previous discussions I'm opposed to an outside site, if were a true sandbox, I don't mind, but then the url should not be that as it is misleading. sandbox.nycdrupal.com might be fine.
I'd like to draw some attention to some real life issues with an outside sites. http://drupaldojo.com
I wa around when it was being built and couldn't tell you who owns it now. DNS has been down for weeks. http://groups.drupal.org/node/13328
Advomatic
So sad about drupal Dojo...
So sad about Drupal Dojo. They probably got killed on bandwidth charges. They seemed to have a rather inefficient system for downloading videos and no vodcast, so I'd often had to download multiple times. Could someone whose downloaded most of the videos repost them to Blip.tv??? I definitely see your point about the dangers of moving DrupalNYC to a privately held domain, but I still like the sandbox idea.
Hate to say it
But I'm in the "stick with g.d.o." camp.
I wouldn't be opposed to using an external site as long as it is clearly labeled as a "sand box" and also clearly points back to g.d.o.
One way to do that would be to disable comments on that site, and customize it to redirect folks to g.d.o. to "discuss". I know there is a "discuss this" module somewhere in Drupal. Wonder if that would work to redirect to another site?
What the other site could be used for may include...
- Video or Audio of meetups or camp presentations
- Place to host or reference presentations
- Place to host more complex polls (always cross post a link to g.d.o. of course)
- Other advanced ideas not suitable to g.d.o.
This is my opinion. No one is going to die by have two places to go for Drupal NYC stuff. But it definitely could get confusing if not done right. And if the maintainers of the "other site" pack it in for any reason then it could get really bad. You'd have to start thinking about succession planning (yuck!) for when/if people leave NY (yes people do actually move away sometimes - hard to believe) to make sure there is continuity.
Regards,
Peter