What should Drupal.org be in 2017?

Posted by webchick on August 30, 2013 at 4:00pm

This is not a proposal, but I'm going to break protocol here for a second because I'm genuinely curious to dig into something. This is just a thought exercise, not going to necessarily drive the roadmap one way or the other. But...

Right now, 2 of the top 3 proposals by popularity in the Drupal.org 2014 roadmap brainstormin group are essentially "move huge parts of both our community and infrastructure off of Drupal.org." However, within each of those proposals is a very heated discussion about the pros and cons of doing so, and the third (sometimes second) most popular proposal is "do NOT move our development community off of Drupal.org." So it's clear there's quite strong division within the community here still.

Let's all step back for a moment, and imagine 2017 (3 years from 2014). Drupal 8's out, Drupal 9's in development, or is possibly right around the corner. Our community has doubled in size again, and so have their demands on the tools we use day-to-day to get our work done. We also all have hover bikes. :P

What does Drupal.org look like in that not-so-distant future?

Is it:

A thriving centralized hub of collaboration where end users, site builders, developers, designers, and others work together to make Drupal awesome, on a website that showcases the very best that Drupal can do?
A relatively simple "brochureware" site with a few well-designed landing pages that link off to external sites where the various parts of our community interact, where we use "best of breed" tools that constantly evolve to make Drupal awesome?
A thriving hub of collaboration that uses self-hosted, well-integrated best-of-breed-tools to provide the best possible foundation for making Drupal awesome.
Or something else entirely?

Because there is a tremendous difference in the resourcing requirements to do #1 than to do #2. Not only in terms of hugely increasing the Drupal Association's revenue (which is going to mean adding business-friendly features to the websites), but also in terms of building a critical mass of community development effort on our infrastructure (where we have traditionally not been as successful).

The steps we take in 2014 will put us on the path to get $somewhere in 2017. Where do you think it should it be? And are you signing up to help get us there?

Comments

What color should the shed

Posted by Gaelan on August 30, 2013 at 4:04pm

What color should the shed for the hover bikes be?

LOL :D

Posted by webchick on August 30, 2013 at 4:38pm

LOL :D

FTW!

Posted by ericjsilva on August 30, 2013 at 5:09pm

Pure gold young man.

Interesting Article

Posted by darrell_ulm on August 30, 2013 at 4:57pm

This article keeps coming to mind in terms of the future of Drupal.

http://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/backward-compatibility

That means, first and foremost, designing APIs, not raw data structures, and not just as an outgrowth of a particular implementation. That's a cultural shift as much as a technical one, but a technical one as well. It means changing the way we think about software design. It means, quite simply, interface-driven development.

Has the www.garfieldtech.com post mentioned above resonated with anyone else?

Some of this seems to already be happening (D8 -> D9?), but still seems to be relevant.

Cheers,

Drupal StackExchange

Principles?

Posted by leehunter on August 30, 2013 at 5:38pm

Before talking about ways and means, it might be helpful to start with some guiding principles or goals. Whatever we want to make of drupal.org in 2017, it should be for the purpose of achieving those goals and in keeping with those principles.

I'm thinking they might be something like this:

Simple tasks are effortless.
Complex tasks are made as simple as possible.
Repetitive tasks are automated.
Effort is not duplicated or otherwise wasted.
Stakeholders are informed and consulted where appropriate.
Decisions are made in a reasonable time frame.
Everything is transparent (i.e. it's clear at a glance why and how something is done or where we are going)
New contributors can be immediately productive and can graduate quickly to increasingly complex tasks.
The most experienced and knowledgeable contributors can apply their expertise with the minimum of friction and distraction.

Anything else?

Goals based on role oriented needs

Posted by tsvenson on August 30, 2013 at 6:35pm

I completely agree with you Lee. We definitely need a set of long term goals and principles for being able to evolve drupal.org in the right direction.

For the last few years we have been trying to catch up with the past really. Instead we need to focus on the future needs.

For me that means we need to improve our UX strategy and make it central part throughout everything we do within the community.

Michael Keara (@UserAdvocate) wrote an excellent comment, https://groups.drupal.org/node/313088#comment-956588, to the UX Strategy proposal, presenting some starting points for us.

--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com

.

Posted by mradcliffe on August 30, 2013 at 5:57pm

I think this could be a proposal.

We should be asking Drupal contributors relevant questions to find out their processes, pain points, etc... currently and assess and analyze this for the next several years.

To expand on what I wrote previously:

Ask (potential) support givers about their process for giving support in the year 2014.
Ask (potential) support receivers about their process for learning Drupal in the year 2014.
Ask (potential) coders about their process for contributing to Drupal in the year 2014.
Ask (potential) core contributors about their process for contributing to Drupal in the year 2014 and how they identify themselves.
Ask (potential) infrastructure contributors about their process in the year 2014.

I think we can find out a lot of information that will help influence the best outcome whether that is keeping infrastructure on drupal.org or distributing processes across several independent web sites.

Edit: webchick already pointed out this is the plan for 2014 anyway. Sorry for spam.

I added another choice to the

Posted by eliza411 on August 30, 2013 at 8:19pm

I added another choice to the list above: self-hosted, well-integrated, best-of-breed tools, not because I even know which direction I think is best, but because I think it's a valid option that deserves exploration.

For me, the list makes a fine entry point to the larger conversation LeeHunter, tsvenson, and mradcliffe and others are encouraging. I don't think we can make wise choices about the options for Drupal.org without a much higher-level conversation. When I try to compare the main options for the site, it helps me articulate some of the questions I'd want to consider before trying to make such a choice:

How does the way we work together make the community what it is? Do we like the community that way? Where does community end and an ecosystem begin?
What's at risk if we maintain the status quo? If we switch to different collaborative practices?
What level of awesomeness can be achieved by continuing with the status quo? By exploring the alternatives?
How does the way the we collaborate affect the larger Drupal ecosystem? And how is the growing ecosystem affecting us?
Where is Drupal itself headed? Do I want to help it get where it's going?

It's hard for me to seriously consider solutions before having a well-articulated problem space. I know we have a lot of pain points now, some of which appear to have mutually exclusive solutions, especially in the context of fininte resources. I figure nothing about this conversation will be easy, whether it begins at 10,000 feet or deep in implementation details.

Online is good and will get us started, but...

Posted by dboeger on August 30, 2013 at 10:11pm

wouldn't it be better to get this discussion in front of a lot of people? DrupalCon Prague is just past and Austin is a ways off in June, what about approaching the BADCamp organizers and putting together an Summit to discuss this? Most of the big thinkers and community organizers will be there. Seems to me that might help get some traction.

As Angie put it, just a thought exercise.

BTW my vote goes to the support our community with best technologies integrated into Drupal. I don't think we can afford to fragment the community, that's the main saving grace for Drupal. That's why I'm here, and why lots of people stay. It may be a simplistic way of looking at things, but we face the realistic possibility of becoming forum-sub groups on a PHP board. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, but sometimes the wheel needs to be modified to fit the vehicle. Can't drag race with wagon wheels.

As far as the color of my bikeshed in '17... glow in the dark bioshed, grown using jellyfish bioengineered 3d printed graphene framework.

The discussion that has

Posted by richardj on August 30, 2013 at 10:54pm

The discussion that has evolved over time (what is see mostly is, is to move repositories to other websites, mostly github) seems to be mostly about the usability of Drupal.org for different tasks.

Personally i would like to see d.o. be a central hub of everything Drupal, it communicates an indirect way of a real community, instead of modules scattered around the internet, also what if a 3rd party provider calls its quits?

But i also see the point in moving things to github for instance, the ease of use, speed, usability and a platform focussed on sharing code.

If we want to keep d.o. a centralised hub for code, documentation, help pages, discussion etc. we need in some way improve a lot on d.o.

Speed, almost everything right now is a full page reload (browsing through the 'books' pages is a joke)
Ease of use (serve the person that just wants to download Drupal core well, but serve the devs even better, especially when you expect such a growth over the coming years).
Better distinction between sandboxes / full projects a way of inviting sandbox projects to become full projects or else clean up.
Update the user dashboard, make it a real home for users, make it super easy to follow / share / keep updated on projects, bugs, translations, discussion, documentation.
Make it possible for users to contribute to documentation and translation of a module without having to have any coding experience and provide the interface for that.
Better search / compare modules / themes
Co-maintainer wanted / help needed etc should be a status where you can search for, now you just run into it by accident.

Basically, best case scenario would be to combine a Github, Documentation platform, super cozy community website to be Drupal.org in the future. Right now it lacks some of those things so that people turn to better options for specific scenarios (like github). What you will get is that some people will just don't bother anymore at some point (new people for instance who know how github works, but can't bring up the patience to get to know the d.o. platform).

How we are going to achieve this? I don't know, who is in charge for it right now? Is there a budget? If not, crowdfunding? Letting the community work on d.o. as well?

TL;DR: Keep Drupal.org the hub for everything Drupal, improve on speed and features.

Drupal trainer and developer

Demographics in this group and the discussions

Posted by tsvenson on August 31, 2013 at 12:02am

One aspect that is quite important to factor in when going through all the proposal to pick candidates is the demographics of those who have participated.

I believe we can quite safely say it is heavily skewed at developers. After all, just by looking at the proposals we see that the majority is about developing code. That actually becomes even clearer when sorting the proposals on number of votes.

Then those of us who are not first and foremost code developers are here because we are passionate about Drupal and the community.

Now, don't take that as saying developers aren't passionate. I know you are at least equally passionate.

However, we are community members that have high motivations to be here and we are prepared to spend a lot of our time not only on this, but also to learn the things that we think will move us forward.

I also believe we in general are more tech savvy than all those Drupal users out there who mainly see, and have an interest of using Drupal as a tool to run their website on. Those users put their own interests first. Specifically business interests. At the end of the day it is those business interests that make it possible for Drupal to exists.

Then we have all those potential new users. Those who haven't been exposed to Drupal yet. Maybe they have heard of it, but they haven't checked it out yet.

Very few, if any, of these users have a voice here. We can only guess their needs and try and include them in the discussions.

But, to be honest, I don't think we have had much success about that here. Not really.

I don't blame anyone for this, its just how things like this goes. We are passionate about Drupal. We also, to some extent, put focus on our own needs and forget much of the rest.

But we must work harder on changing that. Just take the most popular proposal:

Redirect Drupal support forums to Stackexchange Drupal Answers

While I know everyone in favour of that has all the best intentions in mind, it is also something that, especially for "outsiders", can be seen as negatives, such as:

The developers are fed up with us
We are not welcomed in the community

But also assuming:

Everyone that needs support has no problems understanding SE
No problems with creating yet another "irrelevant" account
Pogo-sticking between at least two sites (SE and d.o). Sites that look and feel completely different.

Most importantly, and especially for new potential users and business - It sends the message:

We say Drupal is an amazing tool for content management and display and any digital device - But we can't even manage a simple things as our own support needs on it.

That last one is just a shot in our own foot to many.

So, while we are enthusiastic and busy discussing all the proposals here, lets not forget to put it in the right perspectives. We must factor in the silent majority of Drupal users. The majority that pays the bill and most likely have no idea this is being discussed right now.

Sorry if I sound negative. But if you think of it, these things are the big reasons for why drupal.org is in the state it is in and why we are discussing this.

--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com

Now..

Posted by chx on September 2, 2013 at 10:30pm

The developers are fed up with us

We aren't, there are a lot of really high profile developers answering on drupal.SE (including me) it's just that I know my time creates much more value if I answer there.

@chx I know you aren't, and

Posted by tsvenson on September 2, 2013 at 11:43pm

@chx

I know you aren't, and many with you. But to learn that takes time. For a potential new Drupal user there are many obstacles on d.o to overcome before stuff begins to make sense.

To then be booted of to a completely different site, that requires both a separate account and time to get to understand, will in many cases don't give a good first impression.

In short, this isn't about us having the best intentions for new users, it is about the message we send to new users and how they might interpret it.

--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com

It's all about UX, right? ;)

Posted by greggles on September 3, 2013 at 3:21am

It's all about UX, right? ;) SE has a better UX than d.o forums (right now, at least).

I'm sure a good copywriter can craft a good message to explain why registration is worthwhile and why this is not about shunting people away but about giving them the best answer on the best platform for answers.

knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation

Yes of course. UX is always

Posted by tsvenson on September 3, 2013 at 8:40am

Yes of course. UX is always involved when you do something, no matter what it is.

But, you also need to understand how UX is involved. In this case users will come to drupal.org and be faced with its unique UX. They would click around trying to figure where they will find what they need and so on. Then, when they finally find the support stuff, they we be pointed off-site and be told they have to get exposed to yet another UX. An UX that that both require them to create an account on a non drupal site and spend time learning how that tool work.

While the SE UX is pretty good if you are already technically savvy, it is vastly different to anything Drupal offers. Also, the UX they face is not only how the site works, but how the users there us it.

I remember when the first time I made an attempt to test building a site with Wordpress. Sure it was no problem finding plugins, but the user generated info on wordpress.org was completely useless and outdated. Instead I was pointed to the plugin developers preferred choice, if any, for where to find that. In many cases that was their own sites.

While I don't question a redirect like this would make many choose SE for their project support, it will at the same time open up for a big possibility that many opts for something else. Maybe they see it as an opportunity to help promoting their own personal blog, corporate site and so on. Nothing would prevent them from moving the support there.

And then the UX fragmentation begins...

--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com

Google is the weapon of choice

Posted by lisarex on September 3, 2013 at 3:26pm

tsvenson, I think it's the other way around. From my UX research with developers, nearly all of them use Google to research and troubleshoot their Drupal issues, so they'll see SE as much as d.o. ... and they'll see the value of SE and won't hesitate to sign up.

==================================
http://about.me/lisarex

@lisarex. I'm not arguing

Posted by tsvenson on September 3, 2013 at 3:41pm

@lisarex. I'm not arguing against that, but those users are already well versed about Drupal. They probably been in the community for some time and many most likely have developed a passion for it.

What I talk about is mainly new users and those who use Drupal to build sites with. They have not the same level of community belonging, nor passion and nor have they the same familiarity of things.

Maybe we need to have a discussion about the scope of user support that drupal.org should have as goal to provide. Where should we draw the line and give third party sites the opportunity to step in and complement.

However, this needs to be done right. Drupal.org needs to at least provide some basic beginner and user support. I think it is important that we will help guide new user taking their first steps with Drupal. To at least get enough good taste of it to want to continue.

Lets not also forget that the issue queue support is valuable to triage if there might be a bug involved or not as well. Or in many cases highlight the need for improvements.

--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com

I am confident that Drupal

Posted by lisarex on September 3, 2013 at 4:11pm

I am confident that Drupal newbies use Google too... they know it'll provide them the best opportunity to find answers whether they're on a blog post, g.d.o., g.o. or SE. Or even Drupal-based product documentation.

I don't have access to the drupal.org google analytics anymore but several people do. It would be interesting to see how people arrive onto d.o., where they go, and whether they found their answer.

==================================
http://about.me/lisarex

Drupal for Drupal

Posted by shyamala on September 5, 2013 at 4:16am

We say Drupal is an amazing tool for content management and display and any digital device - But we can't even manage a simple things as our own support needs on it.

I totally agree here that we must pride ourselves to be one of the biggest users of the platform. I think the insights that the drupal.org maintenance team provide to Drupal are invaluable, be it server sizing management, functionality development or migration. Helping them find solutions to use Drupal for Drupal will definitely help strengthen Drupal.

In many a business meeting while convincing the clients on Drupal as a platform, we have always stated Drupal & Drupal groups as one of the working solutions. Here Drupal not only demonstrates functionality & efficiency but also demonstrates the actual result of these platform -> a live thriving community. We must definitely use the platform to build the Drupal community.

Shyamala
Unimity Solutions

Right now there is a barrier

Posted by jaypan on August 31, 2013 at 6:13am

Right now there is a barrier to contributing to the development of Drupal.org, in that it's hard to find information on how that is done. A user has to discover that it's the drupalorg module (http://www.drupal.org/project/drupalorg). The install is buggy (I had to remove a requirement for a module), and I'm not sure how one gets a copy of the database to have something representing the current website, with which to work.

If we can remove this barrier, by having some sort of tried and tested installation of drupal.org on our local machines, it would open up development of the website to a much wider pool of developers. Patches could be submitted for DO, same as they are for Drupal right now.

Of course, having everyone and anyone being able to develop for DO would require some direction. So if some sort of project map could be put together, and turned into items that are open for anyone to develop, so that anyone who wants to put in their hand in the site development can do so.

I personally am in favor of keeping everything on Drupal.org. We have a community, and it's important to keep that community together. Having everything on DO, gives a sense of being a part of a central community, and if contributing to the development of DO is made as barrier-free as possible, we should be able to build anything we need to our own needs as the Drupal community, rather than relying on 3rd party services.

Some thoughts about how I imagine to use Drupal.org in 2017

Posted by yoroy on September 2, 2013 at 6:36pm

Send potential clients there to test drive multiple Drupal products (distros)
I can hand-pick the docs and tuturials I find useful and I download them as ebooks
Similar to simplytest.me I can preview themes in a couple of pre-configured dummy site environments, right from the project page
Maybe not all the projects I use in my custom install profile are hosted on drupal.org, but through smart use of the .info or make (?) file it is through d.o. that I can see which modules have updates
Groups.drupal.org is now part of drupal.org. Each project has it's own group out of the box. Through tagging or whatever metadata, larger topical discussion and working groups sit on top of these
The issue queue is mostly issue feeds I subscribe to with my project app on my phablet
Issues assigned to me, "@-mentions", critical security issues and other highly urgent messages are pushed to my smartwatch
I can download distros as executables: "doubleclick to install Atrium".
Distributions have stopped using 'Open' as part of their name.
The Great 2016 Purge of Duplicate and/or Crap Modules ensures there are only 15,000 contributed projects instead of the 45,000 there were before

FYI "Getting Involved" survey results

Posted by lisarex on September 3, 2013 at 4:17pm

It might be useful to review these findings from a large 2011 "Getting Involved" survey. A lot of those pain points and barriers are still there today!

https://drupal.org/node/1399056

==================================
http://about.me/lisarex

Best of breed over time

Posted by rainbowarray on September 5, 2013 at 9:55pm

The concern I have with saying that we'll outsource key features of the Drupal community to "best of breed" tools is that what is the best tool today might not be the best tool tomorrow.

Today, StackExchange and GitHub are awesome, great tools. Was that true five years ago? Will that be true five years from now?

What happens, if we go through the work of moving the Drupal community over to using a new tool for something like forums or code repositories, but in five years, something else comes along that becomes far more popular. Do we then keep using the tool that is no longer as popular, and that may no longer show up well in search engines because of its lack of use by the general public? How do we deal with the complaints that we should change to the new tool?

And then if we do move to the next new "best of breed" tool how do we deal with the fact that a lot of our history is now stuck in some tool that is no longer popular, and which could get shut down.

We like to think the internet is forever, but it very, very, very much is not. Websites and services are shut down all the time, and their content disappears down the rabbit hole, never to be seen again.

The flip side is that it is no easy thing to build internal tools that are as good as best of breed tools, much less tools that are better than best of breed tools.

I just think it's important to keep in mind that there are very significant risks to outsourcing our community tools.