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

Hi Marc, *,

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 4:39 AM, Marc Paré <marc@marcpare.com> wrote:
> Le 2011-01-18 17:57, Christian Lohmaier a écrit :
> [...]
> 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.

Yes, the possibility.

> 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.

Yes, as the impression is that the drupal group would like to force
everything into the drupal-infrastructure.

> > 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?

I do not get the idea why for this to work you need to force
everything into a drupal-driven tool.

> 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?

Finding all in one spot is completely different in telling people.
"Sorry, you won't be using the tools you've been working with anymore,
since drupal got this shiny nice module that surely is superior"
This is the message that was received. Maybe not what was intended,
but this is at least my impression.

> 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.

Again you're twisting facts, just like Michael. So a history lessen of
the situation at the time:

The Drupal-proposal sites were all *NON FUNCTIONAL*, they sucked
regarding the inbuilt editor, they sucked in *BASIC* functionality.
While silverstripe was ready to be used.

At no time I or anyone else had made a claim about creating the
content itself. The statement was always "Allow people to start
working on it".

And yes, I also was disappointed that there have not been people who
were eager waiting to providing the content, there my (and other
people's) impression was wrong.

But don't claim that silverstripe-team promised a complete site!

> We were led to believe that all of the site would just
> be available to all for use in so little time.

For use, yes, and that really was a matter of days to setup the
DNS-entry and silverstripe was up and running (at the
test.libreoffice.org location at the time). From that point on it was
ready to use, working.

> What was not said, is that,
> in fact, the Silverstripe had not prepared any IA or any sort of planning

You are a liar, and that more or less represent the communication
style of the drupal-team as a whole. Those who voice their opinion
twist the facts at their will.

> 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

Again complete bullshit. You can count the "problem" reports with
silverstripe people posted to the list with your fingers. You don't
need to have experience with silverstripe to provide content.

There is no need for experienced silverstripe people because there is
no need of fancy features yet.

> 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: Silverstripe was *ready to use*. Drupal sites at the time *DID
SUCK*. All there was was "there are modules for drupal, and once you
configure it it won't suck". This did go on for weeks, without anybody
installing those modules, configuring the drupal site (remember, there
were four different drupal demo sites at the time, and *NONE* featured
a working editor.
*NONE* offered an easy way to insert links to another page on the same
site, etc.

Despite all the people knowing drupal, despite all the people dealing
with drupal for their living.

/*THIS*/ is what made the SC made their decision.

People need a tool that /works/, not a system that /works once it is
configured/. And it isn't enough to assure "you can do it, thousands
of sites are running with drupal, drupal is great, bla bla". If you
cannot get the basics to work right within a couple of weeks, you're
out of the question.

Silverstipre's editor and site management was working right out of the box.

And this has nothing to do with the content, which is completely
independent of the underlying CMS. So yes, if drupal team now claims
they have put so much effort into designing a IA and thinking about
content: Why didn't they just implement it on the site that was
available?

> 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,

If you got a problem with the functionality of the site, then say so.

WHAT doesn't work (because the site runs silverstripe, not because
just nobody provided some content)?

> 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.

Again the same FUD again and again. Yes, Drupal is great, but within
nearly two months (during the CMS requirements phase), all those
knowledgeable people didn't manage to create something usable. That's
why SC did vote to go with Silverstripe, with the possibility to
revisit drupal a couple of months later.
But instead of providing a working site with the basics, Drupal team
started their "we conquer the world" crusade and that lead to the
current statement to get a grip of the priorities that matter.

ciao
Christian

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