Drupal.org survey

By Dries on 8 Oct 2005 at 15:14 UTC

I'd like to invite you to participate in the Drupal.org survey. The objective of this survey is to get feedback on the Drupal.org website, and to prioritize the work we should put into improving Drupal.org. The survey will run for about one week, and the results of the survey will be published in 2-3 weeks. Preliminary results will be presented at the Drupal conference in Amsterdam. Thanks for your support.

Comments

good to start with

bertboerland commented 8 October 2005 at 17:10

however, I think that the results wont be very suprising.

spoiler? most people will say the documentation is okay, the dont want mail (but a rss feed of the forum), visit drupal once per day, would like to see rating (stars) for projects and will say drupal.org /needs/ a better search implementation.

depending on the number of surveys, there might be an interesting cross between number of visists and use of drupal.org

btw: a very old prediction has been filled as of now! Dries uses Drupal on his own site :-)

--
groets
bertb

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bert boerland

True but ...

Dries commented 8 October 2005 at 18:03

The goal of this survey is not to identify possible improvements but to prioritize them. It takes a while to implement them, it takes volunteers to maintain them, and hardware/bandwidth to host them. Once we know what to focus on first, we can investigate these into more detail.

Feel free to suggest some additional questions though. I can still add them.

There is no questions about

tesla.nicoli commented 8 October 2005 at 17:21

There is no questions about those irritatingly long threads, threaded display or user control over displayed behaviour.

"Do you think that have more control over the forum user would improve your overall experience"? = strongly agree!

Who is what and what is when and whom is who?

beeboo commented 8 October 2005 at 17:22

"In the forums, we should show who is who, and who did what:*"
I have no idea what this is asking.

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Added a note to the question

Dries commented 8 October 2005 at 17:51

I tried to clarify this question. Think displaying user ratings/karma, number of posts, drupal.org user roles, "member for" (newbie versus non-newbie), etc. Essentially displaying additional information about the user so you have some idea of who you are talking to. I hope that helps.

This question should be

tesla.nicoli commented 8 October 2005 at 18:17

This question should be about site admins, moderators, core developers, security team, documentation team... ad. and founders. I(most) probably could get along without knowing who posts the most or karma. But a good idea about the position a poster has within the drupal organization is very helpful.

The question should reflect this.

There is no such thing as

sepeck commented 8 October 2005 at 21:32

There is no such thing as 'core developers'. There are people who work on core modules. There are some core module maintainers, but anyone can submit patches against core.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

I think as a minimum the

NaX commented 8 October 2005 at 22:44

I think as a minimum the users number of posts and Member for: x amount of time should be displayed.

You can already get a sense of this

bonobo commented 8 October 2005 at 22:31

by clicking on a user's name where it appears under the title. This brings you to their user profile, which generally gives more information about a user's level of involvement.

Cheers,

bonobo

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Sure, but how likely is it

Toe commented 9 October 2005 at 03:52

Sure, but how likely is it that a new (or even not so new) user is going to click on the name of every poster they see?

Being able to see at least a little of that info at a glance would be nice.

Yup

Boris Mann commented 8 October 2005 at 22:34

Just to second what sepeck posted. Drupal is special in that *anyone* can submit a patch against core, and anyone can add documentation.

Length of membership, and likely number of posts, are probably good indicators.

Hope that helps...

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Great idea. Thanks for

iraszl commented 8 October 2005 at 22:24

Great idea. Thanks for asking our opinion!
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http://creativebits.org

For "structure/organization

Toe commented 9 October 2005 at 04:52

For "structure/organization of the forums" do you mean like what forums/subforums are available, what they are called and how they are grouped? Or do you mean more the layout of things, like pagination and threading vs flat-style?

There core developers in my

tesla.nicoli commented 9 October 2005 at 08:49

There core developers in my opinion. Is that one or several individuals that can commit, deny or change anything in the core. So even if patching bug fixes and such are done as a group or community effort there is still some individuals with their fingers on the last return key or submit button. I and probably several others would like to know who they are.

Like is this true? the below list are those that can commit a patch to the core? If it is not or there are special things going on then having a title will explain more.

Dries 17 hours ago 5 years ago 10153 commits
Steven 4 weeks ago 4 years ago 1097 commits
Kjartan 7 weeks ago 5 years ago 689 commits
Natrak 2 years ago 5 years ago 174 commits
Jeroen 4 years ago 5 years ago 253 commits

If you remove Dries from the list who are the others? Do they have the same last say so as Dries?

Who unrestricted can move delete or edit a posts on the forum? Knowing who the moderators are is important.

Who commits the book pages? Documentation Team members names are important.

Who is on the Security Team and can be reached "now" about a large hole in the code?

My english is not good enough to go into lots of detailed text and explainations based on case studies. But I know that people happier when given the chance to communicate their desires to the right person the first time. They become even happier if they make an open cry for help and there is an answer coming from someone within the organisation. Which they can see by that persons title.

No

kbahey commented 9 October 2005 at 16:54

Core developers are people who submit patch regularly for Drupal core.

CVS access is only limited to a few (currently Dries only, and perhaps Steven to a much lesser extent)

Prolific contributors such as chx, moshe, killes and adrian, are no where on the above list, but the number of patches they submit is really high.

In other words, not everything Dries commits is written by him.

Anyone can submit a patch, just follow the guidelines, make the code clean, have a good use case for it, ..etc.

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I guess we disagree then.

tesla.nicoli commented 10 October 2005 at 07:47

I guess we disagree then. Because I can never think in terms of no one having end responsiblility. Regardless of the theory, in practice there is always someone in charge and those in charge should be [ branded like cattle? ;) ] or given titles that describe their achievements and accomplishments within the organization. It is a way of being able to show appreciation for their efforts and to help new comers with indentity.

There is responsibility

kbahey commented 10 October 2005 at 20:03

There is responsibility in the current model.

Dries will not commit anything unless the community has discussed it and there is concensus that it is a good thing to do.

The community sort of votes on patches (all these +1 and -1 things you see in issues). Many of the voters will also test the patch before giving it a thumbs up or down.

This is how most open source projects operate. Linux is the same. Many write features and submit patches, only Linus commits them.

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Security team

chx commented 11 October 2005 at 14:23

Please find all the info about the team at http://drupal.org/node/32750

Karoly Negyesi
Security team leader

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Survey site email down?

laura s commented 9 October 2005 at 16:06

I'd love to take the survey, but so far I've registered and received no email with the password. I asked for a new password, and not received that email, either.

I've checked the spam trap, not there. I tested my email server, and emails are getting through.

Laura
===
pingVision • scattered sunshine

_____ ____ ___ __ _ _
Laura Scott :: design » blog » tweet

drupal ID

cel4145 commented 9 October 2005 at 16:13

I was able to login and complete the survey with my drupal.org Drupal ID. No registration required.

Let that be my first response

laura s commented 9 October 2005 at 16:56

Either method will work ... as long as you choose the right one.

Laura
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define:drupal.org login

bertboerland commented 9 October 2005 at 17:30

my drupal login is a login at the (dead) drop.org server. So that one wasnt working.--
groets
bertb

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bert boerland

this should work

Jeremy commented 10 October 2005 at 10:48

use: bertboerland@www.drop.org@drupal.org

All these workarounds

laura s commented 10 October 2005 at 16:32

I find it ironic (?) that one cannot register for the survey when registration is required. To use my Drupal.org ID, I'd have to reset my password here (I tend to use random passwords that are saved by the browser itself) just so I can use it in distributed authentication (which I tend to avoid anyway) just so I can participate ... because registration on the survey itself is not working.

I hope this is simply because Dries has not noticed this feedback yet.

Laura
===
pingVision • scattered sunshine

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Strange

Dries commented 11 October 2005 at 07:29

You should be able to register. Other people managed to register and complete the survey. Don't know what's wrong, but e-mails do seem to get send.

It's a mystery

laura s commented 11 October 2005 at 15:39

I've requested a new password 4 or 5 times now, and received nothing. I tried to re-register, and was told that my email address was already in use. So I tried a spammable email address, and received the info.

But why my business email address doesn't work, I don't know. There is no blacklist on my end.

Laura
===
pingVision • scattered sunshine

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well

bertboerland commented 11 October 2005 at 16:45

then there might be a blacklist at dries' end where your mailserver is listed on :-)

--
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bertb

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bert boerland

If a web host has Spam Assassin enabled

bonobo commented 11 October 2005 at 17:28

it will pick up some automated emails and delete them silently. You might actually need to go in and whitelist the domain where the survey is hosted.

bonobo

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My Spam Assassin

laura s commented 11 October 2005 at 20:11

...does not delete, simply flags. I don't like to miss anything wholesale.

Laura
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drop the "www."

tomcalloway commented 12 October 2005 at 20:05

I had better luck with the following "lasergazer@drupal.org" rather than "lasergazer@www.drupal.org".

No new password was necessary. It recognized me.

can't log in

ryooki commented 9 October 2005 at 20:36

I haven't been able to log in using my drupal.org username/password. It keeps saying it doesn't recognize my username. I registered originally through drupal.org, and now I'm waiting for my new password to be sent to my email address (which hasn't come yet).

****
OK, i figured it out. It would be helpful to read all of the instructions, although having the relevant info & example, not the disclaimer, would be the most useful. (ie - username@drupal.org)

I just taked the survey, it

capmex commented 9 October 2005 at 19:37

I just taked the survey, it takes less than 5 minutes. I know this will benefit all.
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Alternative Survey Methods

tomcalloway commented 10 October 2005 at 13:56

Thanks for offering a survey and for being willing to add new questions, as noted above.

There is more than one way to poll users or to take surveys, and I think (long-term) it would be good to consider their advantages and disadvantages and adding functionality. I will begin to do this at the end of the year, as my PHP skills improve.

For instance, this survey only allows you to choose one option for each question, yet one stated goal (above) is to be able to prioritize activities.

I think a better survey method to meet that goal would be to implement a survey that allows the user to rank each choice numerically, and then the survey could aggregate the results from individual rankings to calculate overall rankings for the most popular answers to each question.

Without that ability, I think information is being lost or, at least, uncaptured, from each survey participant.
Again, this is a long-term consideration.

~Tom

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." (Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence)

Agreed

Dries commented 10 October 2005 at 14:48

Agreed. I didn't want to limit each user to only one choice and set out to do exactly what you proposed. Unfortunately, Drupal's survey module doesn't support such surveys (and I couldn't find a free service either). As such, we used likert scale questions instead ...

It would be nice to see the survey module evolve some more. It would certainly open up new possibilities that let us optimize surveys.

Voting methods...

sethcohn commented 11 October 2005 at 11:39

The recent patch for poll.module to allow Approval Voting is a step in the right direction.

If someone wants to code up Condorcet or other methods, or add that sort of feature to survey, let me know... I might be able to arrange some (small) funding for it.

Porting PHPSurvey code to Drupal would also be a good thing....

+1 for Approval

beginner commented 11 October 2005 at 12:35

+1 for Approval voting.
Condorcet is in my todo list, maybe early next year.
Or maybe earlier.

Right now, I'm learning to use cvs:
http://drupal.org/node/33603
Trying to staighten out a few unsolved issues:
http://drupal.org/node/32262
then, I've to work on a phpBB->drupal migration module based on existing scripts and polish the relevant documentation.
??...
I'm glad to learn of an existing Approval patch.
Condorcet, and cardinal rating for Drupal comes next :-)
???
PROFIT!!!

I'll keep an eye on your patch and I'll be in touch... in due time...

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Speaking of phpBB and condorcet:

beginner commented 11 October 2005 at 12:37

Also, check out condorcet/approval MOD for phpBB at www.masquilier.org -> www.masquilier.org/agora/

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Not sure if many here know

tamarian commented 12 October 2005 at 15:37

Not sure if many here know about the UCCASS survey tool:

http://www.bigredspark.com/survey.html

It does have the numerical ranking as a matrix data type, and tabulated results. More options than ESP or PHPSurvey.

It's the best FOSS survey tool out there, IMHO, but I'm definitly biased as a contributor to it :)

Is it GPL?

laura s commented 12 October 2005 at 16:55

If so, any chance you, as a contributor to the project, might be interested in porting it to Drupal or integrating its features into the webforms module?

Laura
===
pingVision • scattered sunshine

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Yes, it's GPL (Aferro

tamarian commented 12 October 2005 at 18:48

Yes, it's GPL (Aferro GPL).

I wouldn't mind porting it as a Drupal module, but there's already a survey module for Drupal. There's always the tough call of either enhancing an existing module, or adding a different one....

Not sure webform is a good idea for it though (I only read the description, haven't used it), as UCCASS may have conflicts with it's multi page forms and question dependendancies. To me, it makes sense to provide a custom node type for it.