What's your idea?
Build a dedicated support system on D.o, Q/A style. Linked to projects, with possibility to convert issues and forum topics into 'questions' (and back), vote for 'best answer' etc.
See also a related, opposing idea,
Redirect Drupal support forums to Stackexchange Drupal Answers
What are the benefits?
Current tools we use for support - issue queue and forums are not really efficient. Drupal as a product needs adequate support to grow user base and retain existing users. Project maintainers need better tools to provide support for their users. Some big contrib projects moved their support outsite of Drupal.org.
What are the risks?
We spend some of our very limited budget and resources available building something that already exists and has largely hit critical mass (Stack Exchange/Drupal Answers), and thus do not spend those resources on other things that do not already exist.
How can we measure the impact of this idea? (metrics)
Traffic, number of questions/answers, number of support requests in the queues (to go down).
Who directly benefits from / will use this improvement? (target audiences)
Drupal users, project maintainers.
Are additional resources available for discovery/implementation? (volunteer effort, financial backing, etc.)
There were multiple discussion around this idea already, e.g. https://groups.drupal.org/node/133494
Comments
I'm not sure about this one
I'm not sure about this one anymore, TBH... because of the extreme lag between when the community was excited about this originally and when it would actually be feasible to implement, http://drupal.stackexchange.com/ seems to have gained a lot of momentum (about 13,000 users and 30,000 questions).
It'd be interesting to hear from some folks who provide Drupal.org forum support though on whether or not these tools would be helpful to them.
Though, I will say...
One extremely useful tool that I know developers would love is the ability to take an issue and move it out of the issue queue (since a lot of people post "how do I do this in Drupal?" kind of questions to the most random of queues) and into the "support system" (whatever that is) and also back again (since a lot of people report bug reports in the forum currently, not realizing the issue queue is the proper place).
It doesn't sound like this functionality would be included here, though, necessarily. More like building Stack Exchange (lite?) on Drupal.org itself?
It will be included, this is
It will be included, this is what "with possibility to convert issues and forum topics into 'questions'" in the description is about. I'll add "and back" as well.
If the intention is to simply
If the intention is to simply clone Stack Exchange I don't understand why we would bother. Providing a Q&A is the core competency for Stack Exchange and they have the resources and expertise to do it very very well (especially in the area of gamification). If we're going to devote scarce resources to reinventing what's already available for free, there has to be a compelling business case.
If it's done in a way that
If it's done in a way that other organizations can duplicate it, then it's well worth it. A solid Drupal q-a/knowledge base system that can also convert to forum posts or issue queue tickets has applications for anyone who needs to provide a support site.
Stack Exchange is great and all, but how would I deploy it for myself? It's closed source. And I'm not sure they even offer the code to people willing to pay for it.
Plus, I'm not impressed with the quality of Drupal Answers. Both my co-worker and I have asked questions, and not gotten any decent feedback on some of them. Something that integrates with the issue queues is far more likely to draw maintainers eyes, and thus more likely to receive good answers.
Not all questions will get answers on any system
I'm not voting for or against.
I think that drupal issues, forum, and answers/overflow are all good sources of information, and I use them all to get answers to question I might have, however I don't think it is fair to say that the quality of drupal answers is not great becuase your questions have not been answered to your satisfaction.
There are unanswered and poorly answered questions on there (some of them even have flat out wrong answers), but that is also the case with the drupal support forum and the drupal issue queues, and any other support forum I have ever seen.
Unless you are paying for support you can never expect all questions to be answered in a satisfactory way (or even at all).
You're right. Bad example. My
You're right. Bad example.
My low opinion of Drupal Answers stems from the fact it doesn't seem to be doing it's job. Even though it's been around for years.
Good answers come from people who know what they are talking about. As far as I can tell on Drupal, that's usually the maintainers of various modules. When I was first learning Drupal, I spent hours browsing the forums looking for help, and hours composing the best posts I could to ask for help. I got basically nothing in response.
Eventually I learned how to ask for help in the issue queues where the people who knew what they were talking about actually spent time. That was a lot more productive.
Note, this was a few years ago when D7 was in alpha. What the forums are like now, I don't know.
Drupal Answers appears to serve the same audience as the forums did. Like the forums, I don't think enough of the people who know what they're talking about are on it.
While it has potential, I'm not sure Stack Exchange is the best place for it. Is there any way we could easily link/convert questions and issues? Does it fit Drupal culture?
There's also a lot of community issues to figure out, I just clicked on a question asked in 8/2011 with one answer from 5/2012, and another from today. None of which the asker has marked as accepted.
All in all, Drupal Answers has a long long way to go before it becomes a decent resource. I don't think it's worth it, when we could build something better on d.o. At least, that's my opinion. Anyone have any stats on how many questions there are versus accepted answers? I just saw a question posted in 2011, one answer from 2012, and one from today. I doubt the person who asked got any help from either answer.
As far as what kind of support I can expect, that is much larger question that isn't really something to get into here. But, if I can't expect an answer from Drupal Answers, then why does it even exist? The whole point of the site is to answer questions. If that doesn't happen, then the site is not doing it's job.
I think a Drupal version of the Q/A format, integrated with how projects are managed, has a much better chance of providing good support. Largely because it will be part of Drupal, where the people who know the answers already spend lots of their time. Rather than a separate, third-party, site, that they may no know even exists.
So it sounds like what you're
So it sounds like what you're saying is regardless of what support system is chosen (DIY or StackExchange or something else), the key to users getting useful answers is to make sure there's tight integration of that solution to whatever website the developers hang out on, so that the people who can help are aware there are questions out there that need their attention. Is that a fair summary?
I guess that is possible
I guess that is possible.
I feel that regardless of what happens there will still be some questions that don't get answered, or are poorly answered.
I don't think there is any way around that.
Having the tight integration would definitely help, however I'm not sure "whatever website the developers hang out on" will ever be one single place.
Maybe I'm wrong though and the main reason that people moved to stack overflow at all was because of a lack of features on drupal.org.
A single point of support is probably going to be easier for newer users, however with google it shouldn't really matter.
Plus there are poeple who spend a lot of time in the drupal.org support areas who would not appreciate being shut down in favour of SO, and vice versa.
I don't think it is really that bad a thing to have multiple sources of information if they are all of reasonable quality, so I think making the drupal support areas better where possible would be a great thing.
The risks are valid though.
[edit]
A good example of a support forum that doesn't work because it has been separated is the drupal commerce one on drupalcommerce.org (at least in my opinion).
It has a very large ratio of unanswered questions. I think this is because it's away from drupal.org, and because it requires you to make an account on another site.
On top of this, there is still a large number of support requests in the drupal.org issue queue so the idea hasn't worked and has resulted in more fragmentation and confusion.
So while I think external places like stack exchange are ok, external support queues for individual projects are bad, so if there was a better support section on drupal.org maybe people would not want to do this. Plus I think we would win some people back from stack exchange.
Pretty much.Answers come
@webchick Pretty much.
Answers come from those who know the most about what's being asked, for Drupal, that's usually the developers. If they don't see the questions, then they can't even think about answering them. We could use the integration between the question site and the issues/project stuff to make sure the questions get seen.
'Course, all this is just my opinion...
Heck, maybe all we really need is for users to tag their forum posts with projects that might be/are applicable, then have those posts show up in a view on the maintainers dashboard.
I have a strong preference
I have a strong preference for moving to at D.O. Powered QA:
I am fine if the drupal.org decides to use a service like stack-exchange, but I think a very basic QA that is integrated with issues and projects would be far more valuable.
Examples of integration:
- projects and issues tagged in this question/answer
- How many questions and answers tagged with a project (on the project page right under the issues block)
- Turning a question into an issue and an issue into a question
more integration ...
I just had some more ideas how a native QA could be integrated into D.O.: Let project maintainers select QA that get pulled into a special "FAQ" view/page linked to the project (this one seems low effort and would be such a win).
gamifying the forum
My personal feeling is that reproducing Stack Exchange would be unproductive. They have their system and it is working (with positive and negative effects). Drupal.org shouldn't loose sight of its focus. Which is, i think, to develop drupal and its community.
To gamifying the forum would cut it loose of the spirit of free sharing. Stack Exchange exist only for itself in that sense, although a strong will and presence can achieve great things as it is the case.
One alternative would be to simply analyse the real defaults of the actual system and find specific solutions to them, prioritizing the more pressing issues. In so doing, little by little, an integrated and global solution should appear by itself. Let the help system grow, like the module ecosystem and even the different version of drupal have done.
One of the great problems
One of the great problems that i see in the forums is that people do not use the search feature or read the documentation. The reason must be diverse for each of the users. I could possibly try some psychological argumentation, but i believe that it would resolve little or nothing.
Creating an interactive help form (in truth a disguised search) and in a highlighted position might be a path. The results would of course be 'user friendly' (this part deserve more though).
One way of helping the search engine could be to give the capacity to the users to categorize (tags) the post in the forum. Then for example, when i submit my logging problem, the posts with more 'logging problem' tags could appear first. The solved problem could also have a factor to prioritize them in the results. Many different factors could be implemented to help the filtering and aggregation of the posts.
Different results could be given: forum, issues or documentation...
Edit: made some additions and corrections.