[libreoffice-website] Re: [Drupal] The road ahead and missed opportunities

Le 2011-01-18 17:57, Christian Lohmaier a écrit :
> The problem is not drupal the technology, but that people were not
> listening to each other.
>
> That really is the biggest problem. The impression people got is that
> drupal team is only interested in pushing drupal, not in how community
> works. You cannot force people to use whatever feature just because it
> is available in future when people have been using another solution
> for years that just fits their needs.
>
> Sophie (as member of the SC) and others did attempt several times to
> point this out, but basically it always continued like that.

As you say, people were not listening to each other. As a LibO member 
who did participate on the Drupal team and helped organise it under the 
impression that, clearly, the SC had given us the go ahead with the 
possibility of moving on to the Drupal CMS within 6 months. The proposal 
put to the membership by the Drupal group was that Drupal would act more 
as a hub offering windows to the various LibO communities. Somehow this 
also got lost in the disinformation that was being passed around.

> LO does not start completely from scratch. It has 10 years of history
> it shares with the OpenOffice.org project. During that time, various
> ways of collaboration have formed, various tools are used. You cannot
> just throw that all away and force it all into drupal.

So, would you be OK with having a Drupal site acting as a hub directing 
traffic to the different sites? This is then the question. Would it not 
be more impressive to have people think that we are a whole community? 
Would it not be more advantageous to find all of the connections in one 
spot? Would not this give us all a sense of community?

> Also it was stressed many times that we urgently need a website with
> content, a css theme, etc. But instead on working on a theme together,
> drupal just did their own "in the backyard" - and then that in turn
> led to the situation where David and very few others had to do it all
> by themselves, under quite a bit of time pressure. And the frustrating
> part about it was that while there were many requests for help "please
> provide content, please help with the theme" there was no feedback, no
> help offers, but instead one had to read "tada - look at our beautiful
> drupal theme", or "we got great plans, we envision<whatever>". So in
> fact SC's statement comes much too late.

Yes, the urgent need for content. Unfortunately, the Silverstripe team 
had, at the time, assured the SC that the site would be up and running 
in a matter a few weeks. We were led to believe that all of the site 
would just be available to all for use in so little time. What was not 
said, is that, in fact, the Silverstripe had not prepared any IA or any 
sort of planning for the actual web development and that it would be 
done on a "first come first serve" meritocratic way. Unfortunately, it 
was, and still is, quite difficult to find any members experienced 
enough in Silverstripe in any group who wanted to step up and help out. 
They just did not exist as Silverstripe is a newcomer to the CMS world 
and very few people have experience with it.

However, the Drupal site developers, who had been led to believe from 
the SC that we had a 6 month delay to prep a Drupal solution, were busy 
organising and raising a Drupal solution in a very organised way. 
Contrary to the Silverstripe CMS team, Drupal devs can easily be found 
in any of the NL groups or on any mailist. We even had offers of Drupal 
website dev. companies offering their help. It was therefore inevitable 
that Drupal development would outstrip the Silverstripe (it is still 
comparably still quite advanced). It was often said that the Drupal devs 
were not interested in learning about a new CMS as they would have no 
use for it in their professional work. They were only interested in a 
Drupal site. Drupal devs are just more easily found and greater in 
number than Silverstripe devs.

As for adding content, well, why was this not planned when the SC was 
assured that the site would be ready within a short time frame? So, the 
excuse for having no content for the Silverstripe site is that the 
Drupal team were being too organised or that they were negligent in 
providing content? I would find it strange that for some reason, ALL of 
the content contributors were on the Drupal side? Then why was 
Silverstripe chosen?

Again, as pointed out earlier, you just have to visit the Silverstripe 
and wiki pages to see. Again, these sections speak volumes. You just 
cannot blame the Drupal devs for the lack of documentation on the 
Silverstripe site. Otherwise, with this kind of rationale, the wrong CMS 
solution was picked then as there are simply that many more experienced 
Drupal developers who could make the LO site workable. IMHO, with so 
many more Drupal experienced website devs, had the Drupal CMS been 
chosen, we would have had more membership participation and less 
bickering. But OK, Silverstripe was chosen over Drupal as the 
competition had drawn to a close.

> But then again: Drupal is not "dead" at all - it should just be clear
> that the primary focus must be the site that is public for the user.
>
> ciao
> Christian

Sadly, the constant reminder that the Drupal CMS solution is not dead 
and may be considered later is disheartening. This is just saying, that, 
if the Silverstripe site doesn't work, well, we will be sorry to 
everyone and move to Drupal anyway. Regardless of any outcome, the SC 
will just have to come to terms with the fact that, for a large site 
such as LbiO with a potential of 100 million users/downloads, most 
serious devs would recommend the use of a Drupal CMS solution. You will 
constantly have to explain your reasons for picking Silverstripe ... or 
maybe just add it to a FAQ.

Cheers

Marc


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