Hello World,
As you may have noticed, Groups.Drupal.org is being upgraded to Drupal 6. In that process we are adding fun new features and re-evaluating decisions from the past.
After careful consideration we have decided to remove the ability to post private content to the site. As a result, we will be unpublishing all existing private content. We manually reviewed existing private content and it was either posts that could be public or which could find a new home outside of groups.drupal.org.
What you need to do with your old private content
If you posted private content, you will get an e-mail this coming week to advise you about this decision so that you can either publish that old content or know that it will be deleted. After Friday April 10th, this content will be unpublished.
If you have general questions you can leave them as comments here.
Comments
Private content is critical
Private content is very useful for getting organized and sharing. This decision makes it hard for the community to collaborate and work on big projects that need lots of review. e.g. Drupalcon Boston.
Forcing absolutely everything into the public means that you'll greatly reduce http://groups.drupal.org as a starting point for collaboration. Privacy allows ambitious projects to be nurtured. This is a bad decision that needs to be re-visited.
Kieran
Drupal community adventure guide, Acquia Inc.
Drupal events, Drupal.org redesign
I agree with Kieran here.
I agree with Kieran here. I've been part of several working groups that have started in Google docs as a form of private collaboration, before moving to a more public forum on the groups. I would personally rather have more openness than less, but can see where there will always be a place for that.
Although I suspect people will always do things outside of the groups, it would be nice to continue to allow that practice within gdo, if for no other reason than such groups would have the option of easily allowing future publication of their archive material if they so chose.
Also, I received one of these notices, and find it ironic that the post linked in that e-mail (to this post) seems to be private (or at least was marked access denied until I joined the group).
Aaron Winborn
Drupal Multimedia (book)
AaronWinborn.com (blog)
Advomatic (work)
Aaron Winborn
Drupal Multimedia (my book, available now!)
AaronWinborn.com
Advomatic
We offerred this service for
We offerred this service for years and it was very lightly used. But it had the effect of showing everyone a Public checkbox and confusing the UI. It also slows down many queries a little, complicates Solr indexing, forces a little more theme work, etc.
Further, there are a lot of editors on the site and they all can see private posts so the level of privacy might not have been what was expected. I think these groups are better off launching own drupal sites. That guarantees privacy. Drupalcon DC launched their own project coordination site and I think it worked out well for them.
I know that this is a bummer for certain projects like GHOP/GSOC, but Josh, Greg and I discussed this a lot before proceeding.
groups are better off launching own drupal sites ??
I'm surprised to see this suggestion. There have been several rather hot discussions of the desirability of going outside gdo in the NYC group, people who have suggested setting up another site for the group or event have historically gotten flamed. The concern is mainly about who will control the independent site in the future.
Jean Gazis
www.jeangazis.com
www.webhostny.com
Jean Gazis
www.jeangazis.com
www.webhostny.com
I thought I was clear, but
I thought I was clear, but let me restate: If you require privacy, then you should consider setting up own drupal site. I see no immediate reason why the NYC group would need that. A site for planning your Drupalcamp could conceivably need it.
There is a larger issue here. groups.drupal.org exists as a space where we can all share information about drupal. Private posts are invisible to the google and all non members. thats a serious problem. I'm not saying that all information deserves to be public, but I am saying that drupal.org and the Drupal Assocation doesn't need to host information that benefits so few.
agreed
I think your point that "there are a lot of editors on the site and they all can see private posts so the level of privacy might not have been what was expected" makes it clear why the decision was made and why it is a good decision.
The NYC group has never used private content (or at least not that I'm aware of), in the few instances where there was such a need we've turned to mailing lists and sharing a document via email or a system like google docs to augment our use of G.D.O.
Thanks to everyone that has put in effort to keep this critical community resource running and improving.
My initial tour of the new site was uneventful, no bugs to report. But, I'll try harder to break it later tonight.
Yes please let's reconsider
For groups that need private content I fear it will be a tipping point to migrate away from g.d.o. Our local group has used very little private content it is valuable to our group. For example we've had social events at member's houses (mine included) and have people who would like to do this but don't want our addresses blasted around Google. As well we have things like group discount codes that are likewise useful but not for public consumption. Instead of having public content here and private content elsewhere I fear groups will migrate to the other places where they can have public and private content. Ultimately this will make g.d.o less valuable as the go-to resource for where to find local groups or SIG's.
If there are other resources (i.e. more support people etc.) that are necessary to support this lightly-used but valuable feature let's see if we can't get those resources from the community before exiling private content.
Josh
--
Blog: Joshua Brauer dot com
We? and New Home?
We reviewed the messages. Who is 'we'?
How many private messages were there?
'Find a new home outside of groups'.. could you recommend where this new home would be? Yahoo - Google - personal website - where do you prefer we begin collaborations for Drupal that aren't yet ready for prime time ?
Greggles, not trying to be a whiner, but if everything is open to everyone for every reason, then you should be just as open:
1.what was the criteria used to reach the decision
2.the names of everyone who participated in the decision process
3. how many private messages were there
etc.
bekasu
more details
There were 716 private posts. Most of them contained information which could be public and seemed to be mistakes by the original poster.
Who discussed it as the site team: moshe, joshk, and I discussed it in person and via e-mail.
Who we discussed it with: the main group that used private posts was the Summer of Code mentors team. I discussed it in #drupal with webchick and AlexUA and solicited feedback from chx (the three people who most actively coordinate that group). They agreed that private content has historically been useful for the group, but that they can probably make more of the content public or just use a mailing list if they really need private content.
--
Growing Venture Solutions | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
A look at a few
Of my six pieces of private content:
2 are posts related to Summer of Code mentors. Generally they are drafts of documents that would later become public. Certainly they could have been drafted in private and circulated on a private email list. That would not have provided the same opportunity for community involvement. As a noob to helping with SOC I certainly wouldn't have been the one to initiate such a private email nor would I have created such a post in public as it may have been wholly wrong when I first put it together. A final critical aspect to these things is institutional memory. If the drafts languish in a few overworked wonderful volunteer's mailboxes and private email lists they aren't available to the next generation of leaders. The experience of joining an organization and being able to get a complete back story with the private documents that would otherwise not be available is hugely valuable if we don't want to repeat those things we learned from before.
Three more are posts that contain information for our local group but shouldn't, for privacy reasons, be on Google. One could argue that they should just go away. This unfortunately limits the effectiveness of our group as a vehicle for extending the Drupal community in our community.
The last was a testish-post that could be deleted.
Thanks for listening....
[edited] -- I was off by one in my count so I edited to make the totals correct
--
Blog: Joshua Brauer dot com
some alternatives still on g.d.o
I agree it makes sense to keep address/phone numbers private. If you need to let people know about a location or a phone number for an event, you can use the signup and the "Signup broadcast" features which sends an e-mail to the people who signed up for the event.
Another example of private content was a code to get cheaper books from o'reilly that is fairly well known.
I agree about drafting posts, but I'm not sure that those really need to be private. Can you link to the posts? As awesome as Drupal's natural SEO is...I think a draft post in some group with 30 subscribers is reasonably private for the short amount of time that documents need to be private before they are mailed to the world.
To respond to the earlier question, I'm mostly going on Moshe's advice that keeping private content is a pain for new modules that we want to roll out and the fact that less than 3% of the content on this site is private (and in our review most of it didn't seem to be needed, so it's an even smaller percent than that).
--
Growing Venture Solutions | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
To respond to the earlier
I am experiencing some of this pain at this very moment on a site we're working on. I would dearly like these access control/integration problems solved rather than avoided. To hear that you'd prefer to avoid this bug rather than fix it means that I, too, will likely never have the hope of finding a solution :(
There is no known bug with
There is no known bug with access control or integration with 3rd party modules. We are not avoiding anything - I have no idea what you want fixed. We are optimizing the UI and performance for the common case - public posts.
If you know of an access control bug, please post it to the core issue queue, or the OG issue queue, or to the relevant other contrib module.
Private Please
I understand the g.d.o site team perspective, but I would like to voice my concern over the need for private content. The few others have brought up the same points I would have in a well worded way, so I won't repeat it. Private content is important for the small use cases, but very pertinent there.
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
James Cross Construction Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
Drupal Development Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
links?
Can you provide some links to content you have created which needs to stay private? Use my contact tab if you like.
I've had several people send me links to their private content. After I review it it seems clear we can achieve the same end result with other features (using signup broadcast e-mails or using alternate means to communicate information).
--
Growing Venture Solutions | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Already Changed
The only article that I marked private was a post that I only wanted posted to the group, but it was a long time ago and I realized it didn't need to be private so I've already changed it.
However, that is just my personal usage, I think the general concept is still valid and important using the other cases being presented. I already use the signup broadcast to notify people of my phone number during events and other stuff. I have had a few people comment about the fact that they don't want to be emailed like that, they want to have it up online where they can access it when needed and not be intrusive (or risk being lost in email).
I know this is a big change, and most of the changes on d.o/g.d.o often work just fine but require getting used to. My biggest concern here is the push to use alternate methods (or places) to have these semi-private communications/materials. One of the strengths of the Drupal community, to me at least, is that there is such a strong pull to keep information (and community) centralized on *.d.o
Aside from some UI concerns, and technical convenience, is there any other reason for wanting to remove this functionality? I assume organic groups 6.x still offers private posts as a feature, so if this is more than just a policy change that would be worth explaining in more detail.
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
James Cross Construction Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
Drupal Development Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
We stopped using private posts months ago.
I manage the /indiana page. We did use private posts for a while when we kept a log of user's Skype and Twitter addresses. We decided to move that functionality to a Drupal install that was dedicated to our group. Since that time we have kept our GDO content 100% public.
I'm also a frequent user of the BROADCAST feature to communicate with registered attendees and the group as a whole.
Oddly enough it appears as though I have been doing things the NEW way.
I can appreciate the objections posted by many, but with so many options to satisfy the occasional use of private posts I have to concede to Josh, Moshe, and Gregg.
Granted, the change is not a change for me because I adopted this practice before the change came down the pike. Notwithstanding that... I believe that the loss is minimal and survivable.
just one man's opinion...
Managing a Large OG site is not easy ...
Personally, I have no issue with this decision. I manage large (not GDO large) OG sites and recognize it would be much simpler from an administration point of view to exclude private content. I wish I could do this. All the users think they need it but don't use it. In addition, the users of my OG sites had great difficulty with the audience/private selections part of the UI, especially when they belonged to multiple groups. Many mistakes were made and many hours were wasted holding hands through the process. I ultimately had to dumb down the UI greatly for them. Any effort to streamline the GDO UI is appreciated.
Your doing the right thing. You can't please everyone but I'm pleased.
Regards,
Michael Hofmockel
iMed Studios
Open Source || Open Access || Open Mind
Regards,
Michael Hofmockel
Open Source || Open Access || Open Mind
Personally, we don´t use private content
Personally, we don´t use private content at Argentina´s Group here at g.d.o. So I don´t think that feature will do any difference for us.
But theorically speaking, I think that the new g.d.o version should have more featues, not less.
Again, I´m not speaking from a real need here.
The only think I would hate to see is that some g.d.o groups could emigrate... it´s pretty good to log in at g.d.o and read what is Drupal doing around the world, and maybe learn from other user´s experiences.
Regards,
Rosamunda
All private content has been
All private content has been unpublished and access control disabled. Thanks everyone for your feedback. We really did listen and discuss some more.
Enjoy your simpler user interface and quicker pages.
change private entries to public
How to do that?
I created this page http://groups.drupal.org/node/21573 but it is private and should be public - any hints ?
Actually, the 'private'
Actually, the 'private' label you see on the post is incorrect. That post is public - you can see it as a logged out user. The bug will be fixed with our imminent migration to Drupal6.
Just curious how imminent it
Just curious how imminent it is. Looks like the private tag is still there. Doesnt effect anything for me, but did cause me to puzzle.
Wow I just noticed the preview was realtime. Interesting. :) Hmm but there is still a preview button. Any who!
Cathy Theys
http://YesTrainingAndEducation.com
Cathy Theys
a few additional effects
This has a few additional effects which we're teasing out and trying to evaluate whether they are deal-breakers or not.
If you find a post that you used to be able to edit and you no longer can, please let us know the scenario, the specific post and the amount of pain involved.
--
Growing Venture Solutions | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Yesterday I posted in groups and it was "private" by default
Yesterday I posted in groups and it was "private" by default.
http://groups.drupal.org/node/23493
I don't know how to undo that.
Can you tell me more how to make my post public
Since Wed, 2009-04-15 19:37 the post in http://groups.drupal.org/newspapers-on-drupal are private & before most of them (perhaps all of them) are "public"
not actually private
The label says private, but they are actually public.
--
Growing Venture Solutions | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
This decision makes it hard
This decision makes it hard for the community to collaborate and work on big projects that need lots of review. e.g. Drupalcon Boston...
Matt - clubpenguin