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

Hi *,

first apologies for the harsh words in the previous mail - but I was
really angry to see the same wrong statements over and over again.

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 7:17 PM, Marc Paré <marc@marcpare.com> wrote:
> Le 2011-01-19 10:04, Christian Lohmaier a écrit :
> [...]
> > There is no need for experienced silverstripe people because there is
> > no need of fancy features yet.
>
> Sorry, I just thought that experienced Silverstripe people would be lending
> a hand at helping the content contributors manage and work out the
> formatting of their sites.

Surely there is: But people don't need help. At least they did not request any.

The only stuff where I had to help out with silverstripe-specific
stuff is with translating the automatically generated pages like the
download page, or the "go to the xy page" hover-titles.

The slovenian team did make most use of this up to now.

But there have been no requests regarding "I need this or that style,
I would like to do this or that" that was specific to silverstripe.
Minor bugs in the theme were reported and fixed along the way, but
that's not a matter of the CMS, but with the CSS. So you don't need a
team of experts in running silverstripe.

> How many Silverstripe people do we have to help
> out? Is there anyone on the Silverstripe actively helping NL content
> contributors so that their sites look good at first landing?

Well - this list is the point of contact - so when a team has
problems, I expect they would ask for help. So no, there is no
"hand-holding" them, as I don't think it is necessary.

The biggest problem people have is finding the registration URL (that
is hidden on purpose)

> [...] I also believe that another member had commented that
> going about it this way, deleting contributor content without consultation,
> would perhaps dissuade more contribution.

Yes, this was when David did jump in because after weeks after the
SC's decision to go with silverstripe first (and thus weeks after the
site was available for use on test.libreoffice.org) there was no
visible progress on the content, despite the many requests for help on
the list as well as in the conf-calls.
David took his two-weeks effort to put content on the site all by
himself basically, and yes, during that time he overhauled the site
completely, did remove some of the stub sites other people had created
in the meantime and indeed this irritated and also made a few angry.
But in the end they understood the need for this.

> > 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.
>
> I think if you re-read the start of the CMS search for LibO, you will find
> that your answers to anyone making reference with Drupal was met with a
> negative tone from you.

Yes. Because I was always asking: Please show me a site where it works.
And people did just respond: "Drupal is cool, has so many modules, you
just have to configure it properly".
Then I went again: But look, the editor on your demo doesn't even
allow to create tables or links to other sites on the same page.
And the reply again was. "Drupal is great, it can do this and much
more, there are lots of people using it, you just need to configure it
properly"

And this in an endless iteration.

>  Feel free to re-read your posts. You had discounted
> Drupal right from the start.

No. I wanted to see it in action, as the demos that were available did
suck. It is like that. The editor didn't provide even the most basic
functionality. But people were praising drupal for its great features
and you-can-do-anything-if-you-configure-it. But nobody did configure
it. Instead four different drupal demo sites were setup, instead of
working on one drupal site and turn that into a usable demo.

So yes, I was negative about drupal from the very start, since what I
saw didn't convince me at all. There were pepple earning money with
drupal that praised drupal, but those people did "hide" behind "I have
no time". And again: It wasn't much functionality I asked for.

That's basically where "Drupal folkd don't listen" started.

> It seems to me that most groups would want to look for a CMS that best fits
> their needs, consult with their membership (in this case our website
> membership) and test-try collaboratively different CMS sites to see how well
> they work and fit with the community project.

Sorry, but this is exactly what was done and suggested. I *asked* for
demo sites that demonstrate the functionality. But the public
(official, at least linked from the drupal site) demo did suck big
time, as did those who were created by volunteers. And it was also
clear that we cannot spend months a we needed a website. I did try out
silverstripe myself, and it did fit the requirements I laid out at the
time. Thus I had a candidate, but people had strong bias towards
drupal, thus I didn't want to exclude it right from the start just
because of a bad default.

But again: Weeks passed by without visible progress on the most basic
functionality, instead people were still praising drupal for its many
modules, for its flexibility and whatnot. Then the game "But the
editor sucks, you cannot even create tables, you cannot insert images,
you cannot insert links" - "Yeah, but drupal is great, has lots of
editor plugins, you just have to...", "Then please install it and show
me", "sorry, no time, but there are so many people knowing
drupal",....

> I don't believe that making it
> into a confrontational test of "who can make it work first before a
> deadline" was the best approach.

The deadline was there from the very beginning, and it was also well
known. Even after the SC did post that they were going to decide on
the next confcall, the drupal site wasn't put into shape regarding the
basic functionality.

> It disregards all of the professional
> advice from the membership who signed on to help with website building. For
> which we are still struggling with. This is not the way to build community,
> rather, it splits communities.

Yes, there might have been offers of professional help, but those
professionals didn't help out at the time. It was all just talk
unfortunately.

ciao
Christian

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