Site Building with Drupal

you have now posted multiple commercial announcements to multiple groups all within a short time frame. your posts include zero information beyond the advertisement. please cease immediately, or your account will be blocked.

I received an email from a member of the LA group complaining about this. I advised he join the conversation.

On the one hand, Chris has clearly contributed greatly to the local LA Drupal scene (and more). On the other hand, he may be over promoting the paid classes in too many groups as Moshe suggests (although I think "zero information" is a little strong).

Let's please talk about it openly and resolve the issue before blocking normally productive folks or sending private emails.

Markus

I'm confused about the standard I guess. I wish I had posted what Markus did (first). I understand Moshe's concerns - and definitely don't want the site taken over for commercial purposes.

BUT...

I feel it's important to note and recognize Chris Charlton

• Donated personal time to help host a Drupal booth at SCALE.
• SCALE: He provided gear for demo'ing Drupal
• SCALE: He also made arrangements to hunt down giveaways from sponsors for the event. (three books were donated by apress due to his efforts.
• SCALE: he made the arrangements with RMI to get a projector. WOW!
• said posts are not all commercial
• Chris provided an awesome Flash/Flex session at DrupalCampLA.
• Chris also had a session at boston Drupalcon.
• He has provided the community with tons of valuable information (for FREE) as a result of his participation.
• He also has organized Feb, Mar, April meetings in LA

Also noteworthy - RMI has provided use of their VERY AWESOME facility for LA Drupal meetings. Bao Trung also volunteered to at SCALE. I think Bao works with/for RMI. (not positive)

Soo, maybe I'm biased, but I am no way involved with RMI - other than attend monthly LA meetups there. It seems clear to me that Chris, and others related to RMI are giving back, which seems to be the point. And the majority of us here also are here to make a living doing what we love. Perhaps its the cross posting or posting in wrong groups. But I doubt anyone in LA (that is active) has been offended by the postings Chris made. Perhaps it should be noted he also has organized Feb-April meetings? And not all the posts

Moshe, it seems harsh without discussion - and a little out of line considering a search on the Phrase training brings up these equally commercial posts.

http://groups.drupal.org/node/8512
http://groups.drupal.org/node/9485
http://groups.drupal.org/node/9113
http://groups.drupal.org/node/6934
http://groups.drupal.org/node/6676

ok, this isn't exauhstive and I got bored after a few pages of weeding, but it seems at least 5-10% of the posts on training are commercial. I think the main problem may be the cross posting - but isn't that the call of the group admin? The point of some of these groups is definitely on where to find this type of information. And the info is pertinent and helps keep groups vibrant.

I think there should either be a VERY clear standard - or let group admins worry about blocking accounts.

I have great respect for both Moshe & ccharlton - and don't intend to offend... but I think there's a couple things at play here, and wanted to point out the good.

Thoughts? am I way out of line? Drop it? lol, sorry... seems it turned into a rant. Hopefully its not my own jetlag from drupalcon talking. I'll blame it on the timechange instead. :-P

Chris, please cool your jets and take a slower approach when landing. :) More than most, you sip high octane fuel for breakfast and I'd hate to see others try to put you out like an unwanted fire.

I enjoyed meeting you at Drupalcon and am personally glad to have you in the community.

@Moshe, I'm not sure what additional information besides the course's location details and the actual course outline would be good information to have and still not look like an ad as you suggest. I too am unclear, now, as to the standards of posting lecture based workshops since "Training" is an official option in event types. If the cross-posting is the only real concern then I apologize for posting in multiple relevant groups I myself find useful. It'd be perfect to see posting rules or etiquette text in any relevant help fields of the "add content" forms when it pertains to things like Groups.

I appreciate the kind words from people who feel my postings are helpful. Thank you.

I have to agree that topical training, whether for profit or not, is a valuable asset to the Drupal community and don't see why announcing it would be cause for concern; especially given g.d.o's event-centered focus, community calendar, etc..

As to posting in multiple groups, perhaps the problem is the inherent overlap between the Los Angeles and Southern California groups. Greg Knaddison raised this issue when I first proposed creating this group, though eventually we thought there was a place for both. Please let me know if this is a concern you would like to discuss.

Personally I want to hear about any Drupal related training and events (paid/unpaid) in my area. Since we do have folks come to LA meetups (indeed hosted by Chris and that fine folks at RMI) from Long Beach, Orange County, Santa Barbara, Ojai, and the middle of the desert, it makes sense to hit any relevant groups.

It seems like our friends follow the same sort of protocol when they come to our area - think folks in the greater LA/SoCal region would be saddened if they didn't know about those great training sessions....
http://groups.drupal.org/node/8008

Gus Austin
PepperAlley Productions

I'm kind of surprised to hear that people are upset by these postings. Local/regional groups provide a way for people in the area to discover new ways of learning about drupal. I see job postings all the time, some posted by recruiters who are hoping for a profit, but this doesn't bother me since it's a great way for local people to find local drupal gigs to work on. If someone is offering a training course in my area, I'm glad to hear about it through the groups.drupal.org local group. I think these types of posting are especially useful for noobs who feel somewhat lost in drupal.

I agree with Mike Stewart above - Chris has made a lot of great contributions to the drupal community and it's kind of annoying to see him threatened with being blocked.

I understand spamming is something we want to avoid in the groups, but I have to chime in with most people in here. Drupal help is help whether free or paid. And an event based posting like this makes alot of sense to post where people geographically close to it will be reading. Just my 2 cents. If that is TOS, maybe it should be changed/clarified. Paid != spam. And alot of times you get what you pay for, except with drupal! :-)

Sammy Hendrick
- Wanting a job in California!

(Does that count as spam?)

I see the training session got cancelled. :(

I should have said that "these advertising posts" have no drupal information beyond the advertisement. Clearly ccharlton has made lots of helpful posts and other contributions to the community. I should have stopped before I mentioned blocking his account. Thats not happenning.

I am OK with people putting a couple of lines of advertising in their signature or elsewhere in the post. But I have a problem with the post having no content other than the advertisement. Would such a post be welcome on our developers or support mailing lists? I don't think so. When you post into groups.drupal.org, you email a lot of people and hit their rss readers. That is even more true when you cross post into multiple groups.

Indeed, we need more clear guidelines about commercial posting. Any volunteers?