I wish there was some way to save the mailing list format. It is awesome for listening in on conversations and has always been a great way of ambient learning for me. *
Ryan LeTulle* On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 10:33 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Well, I was really without an opinion one way or the other until I read > this. For my part, I have certainly asked a number of questions here, > primarily because they are heavy lifting questions and I found most of the > helpful souls in #drupal-support to be more of the site-building types than > bitheads, and when I first crossed paths with this list it was apparently > already 'polluted,' so I came away thinking this was what it was for. And > also, I freely admit that I found a lot of pleasure in reading opinions on > the best way to accomplish things FROM people like Angie, Earl, Randy, Dave, > Larry and the other heavy hitters. In a world where, despite best > intentions, the architecture is not necessarily intuitive, the handbook > often falls short (yes, I need to help out there) and the demand on us as > developers leaves less and less time available to spend 2-3 hours hunting > and reading to empower 5 minutes of coding, it was one of the few places > I've had a warm and fuzzy feeling. All of that, though, was simply my > ignorance as to what this list is supposed to be. So, all of that said, I > think those who established it and used it while it was still being what was > intended ought to make the decision. I'm quite happy to seek assistance > wherever a place exists, and, now that I know, excited to think that there > can again be a place, here or wherever you all decide, for me to eavesdrop > on the types of discussions that used to occur here. > > > Jeff > > > On 03/17/2011 10:58 PM, Angela Byron wrote: > > > Well, that's essentially what this list has become, and why most of the > people who used to frequent the list back in 2005-2007 no longer do. > > It used to be that this list was for high-level strategical discussions > around core/contrib/d.o development, active brainstorming on big problem > solving, important announcements that affected CVS (now Git) account > holders, and those sort of things. What we currently (badly) use "meta" > issues and a variety of fragmented groups on g.d.o for, was what this > development list was for at one time. Support questions were directed to the > forums or to IRC. > > However, over time, the volume of support requests coming into this list > for "Is there a module that does what I want?" and "How come my code is > broken?" have far out-stripped most of the veterans' ability to ask, > repeatedly, for them to be taken off-list. And so most of them have by now > vacated the premises in favour of lower-traffic IRC channels like > #drupal-contribute or to groups.drupal.org silos. These mediums have now > mostly taken over the core function the mailing list used to, but in an > ad-hoc, "you only know about it if you happened to be there or if some kind > soul wrote a summary in the issue queue about it" fashion. This "support > creep" has been happening in lots of other places too over the past couple > of years: #drupal, issue queues, etc. and it all only exacerbates the > problem of the more dedicated and hard working individuals withdrawing away > from the larger community in an attempt to maintain some sort of sanity. All > of which is *extremely* detrimental to our community, including the people > who need support. > > I believe Randy's proposal is an attempt to rectify this situation, and > get this mailing list back to its roots, by providing an alternate mechanism > for both support and important announcements. I don't agree that shuffling > contributors off of Drupal.org is the answer (I have a long-winded, ranty > blog post about this I need to write up sometime...), but I also frankly > don't believe that this list will ever overcome the stigma/reputation that's > grown up around it among the core group of contributors, even if we were all > to do a concerted effort to get the content back under quality control. It's > easier to just give up and call a spade a spade (or, in this case, a > development support list a development support list). :( > > >
