exploring the problem space - where are the pain points?

so, I'm sitting in the Git session at Drupalcon and they've just shown an awful Information Architecture problem that I can help them solve... there needs to be a dead easy way for me to say 'I can help with that'.

Who's commented, who's written/reviewed code, who's following, who's voted on comments.

You should be able to add new issue tags w/o adding a comment, preferably inline.

You should be able to follow/subscribe to tags.

Tag pages should have the option for creating a tag description and list somewhere prominently in the IA that it is a tag page.

Tag pages should include a lot of meta-data about tags (See quora topic page for an example - http://www.quora.com/Drupal)
* How many issues use this tag.
* How many people are following it.
* How many projects use this tag (and how many issues within each tag).
* Who are the most prominent people within issues tracked by (ranked by # of comments, # of commits, # of issues they follow, # of votes on their comments within tagged issues, etc). Highly useful for finding domain experts.

We've talked a lot about how to organize larger initiatives + help people working on related issues get coordinated. Improving the tagging systems would help out a lot on these two problems.

It'd be really nice to see as a project maintainer who uses or is helping out with your module. It'd be nice if users could flag a module as something they use + it'd be nice to see statistics about who is posting issues + who is committing/contributing code.

I know it is a bit painful (actually really painful for some) at times. Nevertheless, it is so awesome people are actually learning how to think about opportunities together, and to work together to solve challenges.
Sorry if I've taken anyone off issues at hand!
Praise God!

I've been using Drupal for a couple of years now and one thing that I've always had trouble with is contributing as a Graphic Designer.

There are a few initiatives going that are working towards distro's for designers to use to learn Drupal and act as a way of getting more designers using Drupal. This is great for new designers coming into Drupal and it's nice to see attention being given to that particular subject but the next stage on from this is where I see an open issue for people like myself and for the designers that are currently using Drupal and have an intermediate or higher level of theming.

A solution to this problem would be to give designers a way to contribute back by a means of uploading a range of graphics to d.o that would be available to the community and would go towards helping a range of new developers and themers by removing the intial design phase for them so they can concentrate on getting into the code with less design issues to think about. This could be done by adding another category to sit alongside Modules and Themes with a few sub categories for easier navigation.

So what would designers contribute? A few things i've thought about and have ready to contribute are:

• Icon packs, (yoroy has started a similar idea with his Protocons pack)
• Sliced PSD designs, I feel these would help new themers and would also improve the designer/themer collaborative process in Drupal and could spark more interest for designers and could even see a rise in contrib themes.
• Graphic packs, these would essentially be design elements that could be incorporated into an existing site but would not be an entire theme/layout.
• Marketing media, Brochure templates would be a way for Graphic Designers to help with leaflets for things like Drupalcamps and other Drupal get-togethers.

For those that like to focus on design this could really open up a lot of possibilities.

...is finding where to start. As much as people say 'jump in the issue queue' that's scary and unrealistic. It almost has to be a caring mentoring process, and I'm not sure how that can fall any responsibility on d.org itself rather than the community. This also requires that they know how to get started and where to ask questions.

Finding the right conversation/issue queue is one of my main pain points. I believe it's related to the issue Webchick posted above:

No way to get out important targeted announcements. Most developers have long stopped looking at the d.o front page. Most have also unsubscribed from the development list, which has since become Yet Another Fracking Support List. We've abandoned the forums. Even Drupal Planet is in dire straits, since on some days it's more marketing and tutorials than it is solid API information. As a leader of various development-focused initiatives, it was extremely difficult to get out word about, say, the Git migration and various late-in-the-game D7 API changes. I imagine other folks (D4D, UX, etc.) have similar problems.

Not all issues are created equal on d.o, and without a really useful overview of issues and - perhaps more importantly - subjects under discussion, I find it hard to figure out where to use my time and energy.

Without pretty intimate knowledge of the Drupal community it's also difficult to know who has the power to issues from discussion to action and deployment.

With Core and contrib development it's easier since you have official project maintainers. With design issues it's a lot harder to figure out who has the power to take action.

This last part isn't about the issue queue, but Drupal organisation. On almost any project we do commercially we have a lead dev, a lead designer and a project manager. On drupal core you have a lead dev (yeaj!) but no formal organisation on the design part (that I was able to find).

The main issue for me is that I don't follow discussions on IRC and find it hard to know where day to day development is happing with Drupal core, is there a major push on issues in a specific area, is that an area I care about? There have been a number of times when a new core feature has been written and almost finished when a respected member of the community will come along and say something like: "Wish I'd known about this effort before, because X,Y and Z are massive problems because of the path development went down". It seems like keeping people informed about what is going on in the issue queue and activity around that would be useful. I was at the session in Chicago and the suggestion that we might actually want to look at something like Facebook's newsfeed struck a chord with me. I think Facebook might actually have it easier than we do, because I told it what I'm interested in and so it can work out what I think is important to me.
But at a basic level, this might be something like: a "Similar issues to the one's you've participated in the past" section, and maybe a "What's being worked on now" listing (this one should probably not list specific issues, but pull out aggregated data, i.e. there is a major push on the 'theme system').

I think all some good points. I have been set back often times in committing code, not due to lack of experience or ability, but the nit picking that sometimes goes on as far as Drupal.Org coding conventions. (IE line length, tabs v Spaces, How comments should be written, etc). I think this is probably one of the biggest issues and there is really nothing much you can do about it because a maintainer will have their preferences. I have seen modules that follow the coding conventions to a t, and I have seen others that are just ignoring them completely. This wide range of attitudes makes it hard to know how to approach anything sometimes.

The other thing that has really drove me away from committing directly on D.O is the witch hunt for any sort of functionality duplication, even if your doing the same essential functions in different structural ways. This can be a bit of a pain and has caused me to close a module before because of it. I want to contribute, but i dont want to get whined at when i do if on the surface my module looks similar to another one.

ok, so I wanted to just put together a quick summary of the key points that I'm hearing in this thread so far and that I think we need to look at addressing. In no particular order:

Discovering how to get involved, feeling more confident:
- It needs to be much easier to find out how to propose changes, who to talk to and so on. Then decisions needs to be taken quicker so things actually happen before the enthusiasm runs out.
- develop a network of people around you, start to get to know who's who
- mentoring?

Finding Issues
- I want to be able to easily find issues that I'm interested in, might want to know about, might be able to contribute to.
- need to be able to add a tag without disrupting the flow
- a way to broadcast major initiatives, things that everyone should know about.
- give designers/documenters/non-coders an easier 'in' to contribute

may be achieved partly through
Tag Pages:
- a page that aggregates information about a tag used in the issue queue a la Quora, ability to follow tags for notification/activity feeds.

Issue Summary:
- who has contributed and how? commented, voted, following, written/reviewed code/designs etc. An easy way to see who is involved and who needs to be (invite/ping) and to ping a group?
- ability to update the OP or a way to show what the current status is, where we're at
a) What is the actual problem that we're trying to solve here?
b) What is/are the proposed solution(s) and their pros/cons?
c) What are the contentious issues that need hashing through (if any)?
d) What is left to do on the issue before we can mark it RTBC? (and can I help?)
implementation ideas including a wiki-style "issue summary" that everyone can edit, or the ability to "flag" one particular comment as being a useful summary of the state of things.
- showing related issues for context

Separating Ideas from Commentary
- need a way to separate out ideas and next steps from discussions around each of these
- need a way to agree without disrupting flow (voting, +1ing)
- split/tab out chat from patches (and UI presumably)

Closing Issues:
- what's the next step? what's needed? how can you help?
- marking RTBC is scary - how can we make it less so? (perhaps participatory? - I would only do it if I see someone I trust saying something like "All that is needed before RTBC is..." and I can test and verify that it is done.), checklist for RTBC?

Managing Duplication
- flagging existing issues as duplicates and actually getting them closed
- reducing duplication during creation process (eg. Get Satisfaction - does your issue already exist>)

Profiles:
- making (domain) expertise visible (what can we measure and show beyond commit records)
- contextual information about what skills/experience a user likely has

Tools for brainstorming/planning initiatives
- we don't have them at the moment, we need them.

Integrating Git/Sandboxes into the D.O collaborative space
- doesn't really work now, needs to.

Drupal.org information architecture for Issue Queue & surrounds
- is pretty dire, things are unfindable. Needs fixing.

Module Maintainer:
- have people 'follow' your module
- show stats of people who are contributing to issues, committing code etc. re: your module. Who's active.
- a place for meta-conversations

Oh man. Just trying to do a sufficient review of this thread as it stands required addition of a todo item on my list for the day.

For me, that's the problem with discussions on d.o/g.d.o and why I'm not as effective in issue queues as I might be. I don't know what the concrete changes that I'd like to see are, but I do have some pain points.

I'm busy. I do client work, I do contrib work in my own silo, and then there is this whole universe of things happening that I might like to be involved in. However, figuring out if I'd like to be involved/what I can do/getting up to speed takes as much time as actually DOING the work (which, in my case, would likely involve code) so it doesn't seem to make sense to bother keeping on top of all of it. I never feel like I can get deep enough into an issue to understand it fully to make informed actions toward a solution. Not to mention that, in many cases, there is just way, way too much unmanaged chatter.

Context is the only word that I can come up with that seems to embody what I'd like to see. What mgifford said above about contextual information is the closest thing I've heard. Ideally, it would be great if the dashboard was something that could make somewhat intelligent guesses about what I'd be interested in or what I'm qualified to help out with based on tags/categories/some sort of data instead of being a nicer view of a jumble of stuff that is overwhelming.

I want to be able to come in, scan, see that a particular topic or project that I'm interested in has an actionable item that I can work on and then be able to quickly get the relevant information needed to get to work. I don't want to exhaust myself reading through the little arguments and things that happen throughout the monolithic thread and try to guess if I would be working on something that there is consensus about or whether my efforts will be in vain.

Also, re: unmanaged chatter, a way to quickly see which posts are meaty and which are not so useful would be insanely helpful. We have this points, vote up/down system here on g.d.o, but don't seem to make good use of it.

I hope that sounds useful and not like a whole bunch of complaining! ;)

Hi! Sorry for such a late comment, was way too busy week. I'll try to remember my experience of 6 month ago when I was a total newcomer, a lot of stuff was soo not obvious. And afraid to say it, but a lot of still is not obvious for me.

(All further questions meant rhetorical)

What is Issue queue?
First of, if remember myself half a year ago, - it is not quite clear for me that issue queue exists and what it is actually. If take d.o main page now - there is 1 mention of issues in Refine your search as "Forums and Issues". "I hate forums and never visit those, so what is issues? Something "with" or "like" forums. Don't think I should go there."

There is also link XXXX Issue comments this week. Tells me nothing again. Some issue comments? And where I can see actual issues? I don't remember myself clicking that link more than 1 time overall. And don't remember using that "main page" of all issues at all.

Even if you open that page, it is still not obvious what are issues and for what projects. Above the issue table there is "Download and Extend" title. So where am I? Issues to what projects are they? Is it sort of support part of website - where people ask questions and get help? Or is it sort of development part of website where developers talk about their stuff? And what should I download and extend here? (There is also menu there: "Download and Extend Home", "Drupal Core", "Modules", "Themes" etc. When you click on any of those - you get to new pages not connected to this Issue page and no possibility to go back to it (apart from Back button in a browser)).

Finding issue queue

So as I said above - way to issue queue from main page is not really obvious. Also there is no link to Issue queue from any of the top pages from top menu such as Get started page, or Community and support etc. You see links to forums, you see links to g.d.o and many other places, but not issue queue (there are links to issues on Community and support page in "Recent activity" panel on the right, but there are not only issues there I guess, and no way to distinguish issues from other types of content).

Mostly I got into issue queue from specific module page - I found some module, read about it and opened it's issues. When you are at the issue queue of specific module there is no indication that other issue queues exist somewhere, nor there is a way to get to them. Feels like they all are totally separated.

It is really hard to find some issue unless you purposefully search for it. Most of the times I get to know about specific issue when someone gives direct link to it either on irc or twitter etc.

Following issue queue

Once you found issue you are interested in - there is no easy way to see similar issues or follow certain type of issues.

Email subscription was discussed many times already. I find it the most amusing experience since it took me couple of month to figure how to subscribe for a single issue. No kidding.

So via email its either all issues for the project, 1 by 1 chosen issue using spam "subscribe comment" or nothing.

I tried also following issues via RSS, but it is not the case also. For example I subscribed to "Issues for Drupal.org customizations" RSS. And 5 minutes ago I saw new item on the RSS feed - I open it and see "February 21 2009" and text of the issue which was posted 2 years ago. It tells me nothing of what actually happened now - was there new comment? what did it say? was the issue closed? was it just reopened?

Issue queue vs Forums vs Groups.d.o
It is still not really clear what stuff should go to issue queue, what to forums, what to g.d.o. The best example - I remember during D7 release translation effort we had an g.d.o wiki page and an issue on a similar topic. And half of people never saw issue and only commented on wiki page, other people never saw wiki page. And third people saw both and had to constantly manually sync information in both places.

Opening an issue
So many settings this "Create new issue" form has. What should I put and where? There definitely should be a handbook on this matter! Maybe I missed it?

I remember this in connection to general feeling of first weeks on d.o - too overwhelming information-wise. There were tons of different instructions for everything (which is probably a good thing), but it just felt like its too much a bit. Anywhere you go you stumble across link to some handbook page telling you how you should do this and that. And this page always has links to couple of other pages with instructions. And those also have more links and advice some other guides and some more guides just in case. In the end it just feels overwhelming and you get scared that maybe you actually missed something after all.

Closing an issue
As was said already by others - it is not clear usually if I can close an issue. Do I actually have right? Maybe some special people should do it?

Thats it, in short. My general feeling about issue queue I can describe in next way "Since everyone is successfully using it, they all probably know some secret, I am sure I am just missing something important to start properly using it too". I'd be happy if you tell me the secret now. :) Or if I was not all wrong there - I'd be happy to help improving the issue queue.

In most issues, there are some comments that contain more and better information than the starting post, while other comments are pointless ("subscribe" or "+1") or distracting.

The starting post might be a superficial description of symptoms, but then comment in number 3 an expert jumps on the boat and explains the real problem. Then in comment number 7 we see a patch, and in comment number 11 we see a nice summary. As the issue evolves, there might be two series of patches by different people, that follow two different ideas of implementation.

As a new reader, it is sometimes really hard to decide which comments to read and which comments to skip. And on second read, or when coming back after some time, it is hard to find the piece of text one was looking for.

How can we improve the situation?
- Classify/tag comments as "summary" or "nice patch" or "good idea". This could be done by the comment author or by readers (in combination with a categorized rating).
- Scan the comment text for links to other comments (in the same issue), to identify different chains of discussion. Do this in a way that people can learn how they need to post their links to achieve the desired effect.
- Scan patches for similarity, and identify followups.

All of this is easier said than done. I think the easiest is the to mark summary comments as such. Actually this has already been proposed somewhere. All the rest needs further brainstorming.