FYI LA members:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/69908#comment-555294
is where the GDO/la Organizer Block discussion was moved to. There are half a dozen posts already. We need more input before this weekend. Looks like I volunteered to run a BoF this weekend. I just posted the below:
LADrupal should provide an example, like requested, but if our group can not agree, then it turns into several examples. I suspect the example of choice will be to make it go away. I am going to requested of the LA group to provide feedback to my examples. It will take some time.
In the meantime, my vote is for turning it off.
My vision is more of a self help block, where LA or any user group, can define the content in the "Contact Us" block. Large user groups have more than one point of contact based upon purpose. I'm not sure I can get LA members to agree to volunteer for contact roles, even if they currently are doing the job. That is, the current listing forces any listed member to be the point of contact, in all things.
I'm almost convinced myself the idea of forcing them to post is a good one, except for the fact, some contacts should be private, not public. Raffle prize donations, sponsor contacts, venue offers, in order to 'save face' if the offer can not be successful negotiated. So, I want a block, but it can not point to members without a "purpose" for contacting that member.
If we have 3 people who can handle venue offers, then how does that get listed? 3 identical titles with different member names?
I'd much rather have role_aliases@ladrupal.org be the link, and not a member. That way all 3 members handling venues will get the same email. I've done this before in other user groups. 1 of the 3 is the primary responder for the easy stuff. Valuable stuff results in the 3 members phone calling each other with great excitement and they choose the right member to reply.
And I can expand this logic, but I suspect we know where it goes. Getting the current block to disappear, and having a custom block...
BUT... First, LA Group must do it's homework for a custom block solution. I would not want GDO to go to custom titles just for LA, when that solution will not fit LA either.
And why not the option to have "no" organizers, and when that happens, the block disappears? That makes sense only if a GDO group can exist without an organizer to show in that block. I've got to look at the code. I went looking for it at www.drupal.org/project/groupsdrupalorg ... no download?
http://2011.drupalcampla.com is this weekend, and I know a BoF is in the works to talk about this. After this BoF, I expect the discussion here to get definitive for LA. I'll see if we have volunteers to serve in roles, and if the 'titles' will fit. Otherwise, this block ought to have a display:none option, imho. I'm going to keep trying to get volunteers to provide LA's large user group with a professional list of contact points. A visual aid will be produced.
Pete
Comments
I urge everyone who's interested
I urge everyone who's interested in this to read jstoller's watershed post at http://groups.drupal.org/node/158864#comment-553974 and consider it as a starting point for all further discussions. In it, he untangled all the issues and has made it much easier for us to talk with one another using a shared vocabulary.
The "Group organizers" block discussion here at the local level -- and the issue at http://drupal.org/node/1235206 -- seems to have gone as far as it can go until http://groups.drupal.org/node/69908 resolves. I'm happy to talk about it at the next LA Drupal organizers meetup (or organizers BoF if there's one at the camp), but not at the expense of the other issues we're facing.
The groupsdrupalorg project is useless on any site other than groups.drupal.org and a packaged download isn't needed. It's in Git, though:
git clone --branch 6.x-1.x http://git.drupal.org/project/groupsdrupalorg.git