What is the point?
To improve the 3 landing pages in the “Community”, “Support”, “Get involved area” and later, all the sub-pages which direct people in how they can get involved and be effective.
See how you can "get involved" in this effort on the initiative page on d.o. We had to put it there to get the issue highlighting. Community/Support/Getting-involved Landing pages
Join the background discussions
- Leisa's Prarie Initiative presentation at DrupalCon London. http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/prairie-initiative-rede...
- Leisa's Prairie initiative update from DrupalCon London. http://www.disambiguity.com/prairie-initiative-update-at-drupalcon-london/
- Models of "get involved" pages from other communities
Overview
Currently:
This initiative will help direct people to the areas most relevant and useful.
- Support: "I need help! Where can I find answers to my questions?"
- Community: "Where is everybody? I want to meet people and participate, learn and share."
- Get involved (or getting involved): "How can I help? I need specific guidance on how I can be an effective contributor. "
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Discussion and Roadmap + tasks
Roadmap
Please review the background information about this initative.
Discussion: Roadmap: Community/support/getting involved redesign
Meta-issue: #1288460: Divide "Community & Support" top level nav into Community, Support and Get Involved
Preparatory Research: #1289476: Research: Interview non-contributors to inform "getting involved" area.
Other Models of "get involved" pages from other communities
1) Landing pages
A. Community: "Where is everybody? I want to meet people and participate, learn and share."
#1288470: Create new top-level landing page for "Community"
B. Get involved: "How can I help? I need specific guidance on how I can be an effective contributor. "
C. Support: "I need help! Where can I find answers to my questions?"
Old: #314325: Redesign the support page
2) Section pages
These are not yet defined. They would be specific summary pages, and we'd use the content audit as a starting point. Specifically to eliminate duplicate content. These are some examples:
- Highlights of and List of initiatives - What is being worked on right now?
- Highlights of and List of events - What is happening now and on X date?
- Overview of all topics - What is something I can help out on with my skills/interests?
Content audit: Consolidate and improve content #1237414: Getting Involved Guide needs content cleanup
3) Topic pages - Areas of interest (or Topics?)
How can you match your interests with community efforts? "Creating Topic Pages" http://groups.drupal.org/node/144584
4) Initiative page
This would be a new content type and aggregation of related issues.
#1288378: Create community initiative pages
See the summary of all issues for more details: http://drupal.org/node/1289748
Comments
My two cents on the survey
Sorry, took a bit longer than expected to respond to this.
Building from the survey posted, here is my draft version of it.
“About you”
- Your role?
- Experience with Drupal?
- Knowledge of Drupal?
- Is Drupal hobby or source of income?
Main Survey:
- What are their expectations from “Getting involved”?
- What is their motivation to “Getting involved”?
- What is that they expect to get from “Getting involved” process?
- What are the roadblocks in “Getting involved”?
- If you want to “Get Involved” what are the things you would want Drupal.org to incorporate on their site?
- In what areas you would you like to contribute to Drupal community?
- (If you have been contributing) What is that keeps you involved in this process? (I am also curious to know if they are already contributing do they come to this page?)
- (If you have been contributing) When you started to get involved, what did you want in “Getting involved” that would have been helpful to you?
- How many hours per week would you like to contribute? (I think this should be open ended)
Closing questions:
- Anything else that you would like to share?
P.S.:I have dumped the questions in here. Of course, they need to be refined to be a "Survey question". Once, we finalize the question I would be happy to refine it.
Also, I feel interviewing people for this is a great idea. Camps and Cons are a great place to do this. Any plans on doing this soon?
Dharmesh Mistry
UX Researcher | Acquia,Inc.
Dharmesh, thanks for the
Dharmesh, thanks for the additional questions/refinements. All look good to me.
A couple more for refining:
- What does a "community leader" mean to you? Can you give me some examples?
- What do you think of the existing community structure?
- What areas of the Drupal community do you think need the most contributions?
Interviewing would be excellent. BADCamp (as we've discussed ILR) could be a good opportunity as there are over 1000 signed up, as well as DrupalCamp NH (since we're going to be there). That gives us roughly a month. What about interviewing remotely, so we don't have to wait a whole month? (actually, looking at my schedule, I am not sure I can do much before then anyway :))
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http://about.me/lisarex
Attracting new contributors
Attracting new contributors in order to increase improvements to Drupal is really about attracting project managers who can organize, keep everyone on track, and push things forward. The care and nurturing of new project managers could be our 'trial' focus as we redevelop this major section of drupal.org; they can help us out! Heather shows how Joomla! does it; I would like to talk to them to see how well it's working.
We also need content creators / editors.... someone who can see what is missing, refine the message and delete the cruft.
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http://about.me/lisarex
disagree a bit
I think the biggest obstacles have to do with the bar being very high to contribute (for example, committing textual changes via bzr or git, or having to find where to even start), and also there not being anyone really in charge (so far as I can tell- as you know, I'd love it if you, Lisa, were made official "owner"). I also think that figuring out a way to highlight and credit this type of work is extremely important (similarly to documentation), and it should be evident from the getting involved page that one way to get involved is to help with the get involved page.
What is the official issue queue for this type of work? d.o. improvements? webmasters?
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
the bar being very high to
It's all related. :) If we had a PM for an initiative/project, they could help identify these pain points, point people to the right place, ease contributors in, pair newbies with mentors, find people to improve the instructions etc etc.
There's just so much going on in Drupal right now. For myself, I do know a bit of what's going on, but I don't have time to keep an eye on everything and actually make useful updates. I'm really happy to be pairing up with Heather on the Getting Involved project, and to have Dharmesh, Bojhan, yourself and other contributors showing interest.
Thanks! It's official insofar as I'm on the infrastructure org chart, but it what that really means is open to interpretation. I know it's likely up to me to figure that out. :) I'm a little scared though.... I also work full time!
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http://about.me/lisarex
Happy to help
I am willing to commit to helping you if you PM, and I can think of a dozen or so more business and/or PM type folks who could likely be roped into contributing to this. On that note, have you reached out to Dave Terry at Mediacurrent? His post last week on a crisis in Drupal marketing is very relevant to what's being discussed here, and I think Dave might be interested in helping (so long as it isn't some three year process to get involved, which is approximately how long his company has been trying to get listed as a "contributing company" on d.o.). As we talked about in Denver, it's hard to even begin to tell someone where they can help here, and that seems like problem #1 to solve, since otherwise the PM is really the "do everything person" and that is not a burdon you or anyone else would likely have time to shoulder.
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
PM is v important
The "getting involved" page would be really easy if it just meant re-organizing the page itself.
This entire conversation leads directly into the ideas Leisa shared in her presentation in London about the Prairie initiative (read her post if you missed it). Afterwards I spoke with her about project management, and how hard it is to wrangle volunteers. This is basically what Leisa explained to me, but with her words and hand-gestures:
So we can't just make a "skin" over that landing page, we also need to look at how the projects are managed overall.
What is key here is having those "tasks" which are really clear. For example, the novice tag, in helping to direct novice developers. These tasks are effective, relevant and useful, because someone makes up that task. That is where the management aspect is super important.
Jennifer Hogdon is doing a great job with the documentation overhaul. See: Documentation and Docs Team Proposed Restructuring. Each task is written out, and then "claimed". This way, the efforts of many people can be coordinated for a larger project. That is nirvana.
Yep, let me know what I can
Yep, let me know what I can do to help out.
The next few weeks will be tough with the upcoming Business Summit and Drupalcamp Atlanta 2011, but can plan on connecting after that. The content audit, drupal.org redesign, and stepping up marketing initiatives are all inter-related and need attention. As a next step, I can try to mobilize some additional volunteers at the Camp, and Mediacurrent would be willing to commit time/resources.
And Alex is right - more shops would probably be willing to get involved if there was a defined protocol for getting at least acknowledged on drupal.org. While I realize this is part of what we are going to try and fix, the completely subjective nature of contributor recognition has discouraged a lot of folks in the past.
Cheers,
Dave
Mediacurrent
Please share some good
Please share some good examples in other communities, if you have seen them. We're looking for some inspiration. Add a comment to: "Models of "get involved" pages from other communities.
Vaidik pointed out the Gnome project's approach. I noticed for each of their community based projects/initiatives, there is a clear point of contact. So you can see "who" is involved:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/174989#comment-586519
Is this breakdown clear?
Here's how I read them:
Community - "Great, this is where I will go to find help from others, just like on other sites like Apple support."
Getting Involved - "Wait, isn't that community? Is this how to get involved outside of the community?"
Support - "Hmm, okay, so there's a support area that's not community support. Cool!"
I hate to come in as the naysayer, but to me this breakdown does not reflect the kinds of questions users ask. They're ambiguous bucket labels that tell me virtually nothing about what's behind them, and you could almost swap the top levels around and any could contain any of the other's content.
One thing I note is that these things are all riddled throughout the Drupal community, and trying to use them as distinct primary navigation items seems odd to me. And maybe it's more of a matter of the d.o primary nav than working at parsing "Community & Support" into something meaningful.
Last week I saw a breakdown of D.o users by action item (I need x) rather than identity (I am x) that was quite interesting. But dang it, my bookmark did not save or something, I can't find it! Off the top of my head, "Get help," "Find documentation," "Share" (or "contribute", not sure what words are best to easily map to ways to contribute modules, themes, etc.).
Anyway, that's my two bits after one cup of coffee.
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
I like that idea- action
I like that idea- action items!
"Get help," "Find documentation," "Contribute".
Check out some other examples from other communities: http://groups.drupal.org/node/174989
Not that I think they've all gotten it right, mind you :)
The action words sound much more relevant to a user. Good idea. Would you like to comment on the related issue?
http://drupal.org/node/1288460 - "Divide "Community & Support" top level nav into Community, Support and Get Involved" - I can add your comments if you like and reference here.
BTW - Overall initiative page w linked issues: http://drupal.org/node/1289748