[theforum] Challenging Drupal: Put up or shut up

[John Handelaar]

2008/10/12 Erika <ekm at seastorm.com>:
> Around our CMS, there have been specific issues coming up such as:
> - look and feel of current w.e.o is too generic-seeming
> - not enough developers are interested in working with Drupal
> - our content is out-of-date, general malaise/loss of interest

I think even discussing any of that as related to which CMS is being
used is a canard.

The look and feel, I think, was pretty miserable from the off -- a
number of people (not just me, though I am probably a teensy bit more
irritated than most 'cos I ported the data) put in a bunch of effort
to

a) move everything,
b) in so doing enable us even to *have* a conversation like this,
c) kill, once and for all, recurrent bleating threads about who's
paying for what and who owns what code and who's more OMG-Orsum and
l33t than who else (this one was certainly my primary motivation), and
d) also render moot all further discussion about money and hosting
security by ditching the then-stated need for thousands of dollars in
OS and app software licenses and the payment of some extremely fucking
suspect-looking hosting invoices.

Job done, some time ago.  Yay us.  All.

However, the front-end design just never materialised, bluntly, and
the people who cut the theme that's currently in use (including Tara
and Mike King) were stuck with an ancient and unfinished JPG from
Isaac and did the best they could.

I'm with Martin *to the extent* that I think that was a worthwhile
effort and I've little interest in hearing about what a bunch of
arseholes we were from people who'd long since fucked off even then.
And I didn't read his (rather over-grouchy, imho) post as being in any
way critical of you -- but rather of whoever your unnamed
correspondents are.

But back to your three quoted points, Erika:

> - look and feel of current w.e.o is too generic-seeming

Yup.  For a bunch of web developers we sure do seem to suck at getting
a decent visual design for a group blog together.  So far this time we
don't seem to be getting much better on that score, either.  Our
normal habit of designing by committee is absolutely the primary
problem there.  (Plus I fucking hate the lower-case,
Microsoft-Office-fontset type in the logo.  imho any one of those
typefaces is pretty much the SAME THING as Comic Sans.  But I
digress...)

> - our content is out-of-date, general malaise/loss of interest

And that's because we have no idea what to do with ourselves now that
our niche (not-quite-beginners-anymore web people who've figured out
that that want to do things 'properly' in terms of best practice) has
super-fragmented into often-excellent specialist groups.  One of which
we host.

10 Poor-looking website
20 Lack of purpose/"mission"
30 Competition in everything we ever did, doing little bits of it better
40 Smaller web audience
50 GOTO 30

This was all absolutely true *before* we moved platforms.

The move didn't fix it.  But to imagine that it *caused* it is to have
one's memory replaying events in the wrong order

...on which subject...

> - not enough developers are interested in working with Drupal

...I moved this out of order to last position because it suits the
logic of my post :)

Compared to the status quo ante, that we know for a fact we've got at
least five Drupal theme/module/both developers among us ups our
development resources by 400%.

I think not enough developers are interested in working with *evolt*.
See above.

Totally in favour and supportive of this effort - I just think we need
to have a better idea of what evolt.org is *for*, and in these last
four or five years I've not heard anybody (including me) answer that
question properly.

Dan, at least, had a plan for a new relevancy (in MEO, which became
f2o).  I think it works better in its current form.  But we need some
better ideas about what 'our' people want/need, draw up a way to make
us that thing, and put a grenade under everything we have which
doesn't fit that new vision.  Whatever it is.

[I tried to start this conversation last time and got nowhere.  My own
demotivation is right here. That it's dragged on through inertia alone
for 4.5 of the last 10 years is, I think, not an adequate reason to
plough in again.  If we can think of something better, I'm definitely
there.]


jh