[theforum] Challenging Drupal: Put up or shut up

[Martin Burns]

On 12 Oct 2008, at 20:00, Matt Warden wrote:

> Martin wrote quite bluntly:
>> I'll say it again: if anyone wants to genuinely change the direction
>> of our technical strategy, then stand up and say so. But if by doing
>> so the hope is to derail the existing positive energy, then that's
>> petty, and a no-hoper.
>>
>> Anyway, enough distraction
>
> I feel like I'm at a wedding, and the robed man just told us to speak
> now or forever hold our collective peace. I sure hope there's an open
> bar at the reception.

Sure there is :-) Open bars are the best place to discuss stuff...

> It seems odd that you say your goal is to NOT derail current momentum
> and discussions, and you wish to accomplish this goal by goading
> dissenters to bring up old discussions onlist.

Better onlist where they can be openly discussed and accepted (or not)  
than being FUD offlist. And I'm absolutely not wanting to stifle the  
direction you're going in (rather than "I Told You So"s about Drupal).

> But how can you look at the
> past 4 years and not say that something is missing? Do you really
> think that upgrading Drupal is going to revive evolt? Is that the
> problem our community has currently -- an outdated version of Drupal?

> I don't think anyone is trying to derail anything. I have no problem
> with people engaging in a technology upgrade. All I am suggesting is
> that people should not delude themselves into thinking such activities
> will fix anything with evolt. The current CMS -- however outdated it
> might be -- is plenty functional and can easily handle our tiny volume
> of content. So, the question is: what is REALLY broken about evolt and
> how do we fix it?

See, the thing is: the list is as busy as ever; the chat is up and  
down but seems to have a core group of mates who have the common work  
focus; #evolt is busy certainly in European time.

I *am* disappointed that we didn't get at the forefront of Ajax, or  
Rails, or Django. Mind you, each of them has their own focused  
communities.

But while we don't have the fervour of 10 years ago, I'm not  
altogether sure that we have such a big problem. And I know our  
imminent demise has been predicted for way longer than 4 years; yet  
here we still are.

I know that this community has provided me with 4 godparents to my  
children, has inspired at least one member to cross the Atlantic  
permanently (it seems) and been at least co-conspirator to one  
marriage that a large group of evolters attended.

But I think 2 things maybe are worth thinking about:

1) The industry has changed; we're not in the Wild West days of 1998.  
We're still talking (on thelist) about many of the same detailed  
things we were 10 years ago.

2) Evolt has always focused on the relatively low end; it's been most  
useful for those new into the industry. Those who've been here a long  
time tend not to get much actual help from thelist (and I've had that  
expressed to me for almost 8 years now), and largely stick around for  
thechat and #evolt. But a lot of people quite plainly outgrow us and  
leave. And I don't think that's A Good Thing. People who were low- 
level coders 5 or 10 years ago are very conceivably Dev Leads, Project  
Managers, Architects and other such things now, and we should continue  
to be a home for them.

> Now, as requested, I will shut up.


Actually, please don't, because although I have a different view, I do  
want to think about evolt's direction as a community, way above the  
level of 'what CMS do we use?'

And I'm particularly interested in your viewpoint, specifically  
*because* we've disagreed in the past, and (hopefully) both grown a  
bit since to the point of rational discussion.

Cheers
Martin

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