Forum 'pollution'

While things might be "filed" better how one categorizes a posting will always be subject to ones own choice and not all posting fit neatly into a particular forum. Given that the moderators (including me) typically only see a fraction of the postings (I do not have enough time to read all of them) I notice they do move the obvoious postings to other forums.

As for the design/layout questions, yes some of them are a little open ended and while not Drupal specific they do point out something I like about the Drupal community, the willingness to help others. Sometimes people provide a link to hopeful send the poster to a place that can answer the question, sometimes people answer the questions here. So personally I have no problem with such postings and see no reason not to allow them (people will post them anyhow).

As for the priority, this is a minor issue and not at all critical. While things may not be to your liking the forums work and the current status is not a show stopper.

Not sure what you're expecting to happen... There are already people moderating but everyone is busy and not all misplaced posts are caught. This is rather like writing to the police and saying there should be less crime. LOL

Michelle

Sorry, posted at the same time.

Michelle

The more rules you put in place the more rules that will be ignored. More often then not users just choose a forum they think their question fits in. Why ? because they are new to drupal and in some cases new to everything.

Afterall there is a forum tips document that states to use good titles and yet, we still get HELP HELP HELP MY SITE EXPLODED titles. Not to mention the fact that many users just won't search on drupal.org, let alone google.

I don't visit forum to forum, I use the recent posts tracker. If I come across a post that doesn't seem to belong it is moved.

VeryMisunderstood is right.
The very users who currently mis-phrase, mis-categorize or mis-direct their posts are the least likely to read or be affected by any more 'rules'. They'll just keep shotgunning and cross-posting anyway.

There are a few (but I think they are a minority) of posts that are really non-Drupal, but it actually takes some insight into what Drupal is and isn't to make that distinction. Most of these posts are better answered directly with a short link to the appropriate forum/website than any sort of moderation.

• Trouble with CSS. Go learn CSS or use a standard theme and stop fiddling.
• Trouble with DNS, hosting, permissions. Talk to your ISP
• Trouble with Apache, rewrites, configs. RTFM
• Inability to program in PHP. RTFM or pay someone to do it for you.

There's not really that many bad questions (I think)
... However, I think that a Drupal perspective (like the RIGHT way to over-ride CSS) is also useful in most of these cases, and it doesn't hurt to have the answers available and searchable, even if it wasn't really a Drupal problem.

I say just keep adding things that are bugging you to the troubleshooting FAQ and abruptly point them there.

Things about CSS and HTML are non-Drupal related, unless it's a bug issue. Bad browser behaviour (IE most of the time) is non-Drupal related.

Drupal enables you to create a website. While it is true that basic HTML and CSS can be better learned elsewhere, most often times those links are provided in the answer. Interaction between Drupal provided defaults and your own website is something that does/can fall in the Drupal realm and that line is fuzzy and broad.

It's mostly that kind of stuff or questions of people who have logged out and can't get back in. Or the TS (topicstarter) can't find some option in the admin panel. All this stuff should be solved either by reading the FAQ or visiting other forums.

This is why I often answer with a link to the relevant FAQ. Learning how to use a technical site is also part of the Drupal learning curve for the non technical among us.

Users who keep 'breaking' these rules can be sent an e-mail automatically explaining these basic rules again and with a link to the more extensive FAQ. This might not solve every bad behaviour, but it will solve it partly, I believe.

Sent email automatically? How would that happen? In all ways that would increase the load on the volunteers and they would become the 'enforcement' rather then 'more active, helpful members of the community'.

You cannot solve human behavior through technology, you can only mitigate it. We can move posts as needed, we can answer in the forums as we can, we can direct to the FAQ as needed. I do not want us to become unfriendly to those lost neophytes who have wandered into the complexities of a CMS without realizing how much Drupal provides and protects them.

----
Drupal.org is the home of the Drupal software and the community and the software. I do not see a viable way to limit it to Drupal alone nor see it as healthy.

And setting status.

One thing this touches on is something I've mentioned before. It would be nice if we had a general "webmaster" forum for people building Drupal sites that are looking for help that's not strictly Drupal but for their Drupal sites. Unfortunately, my idea to present a proposal to redo the forum list has gotten put on the back burner as I just dont' have time.

Michelle

Your motivation may still stand, but your actual solutions are still not there.

- "Get rid of"? These folk are most often first-time posters. They've already clicked past the terms of use and the paragraph telling them to search, read the FAQ and the Documentation and the posting rules yet they still do this and the system couldn't see them coming. So what happens? Almost all of those posts I see get told off by one or more of the commenters immediately. And life goes on. What's your better suggestion? An Insta-ban for using too many CAPS?
Really, please, how do you think this problem can be SOLVED?

- Who is to do the "concentrate more" job? People of all levels will continue to post. The current situation is mostly "This is off-topic, but here's the answer anyway". Do you want to force that into "This is off-topic so your post is deleted"?
That's not an improvement. Adding more policemen and making those policemen more unfriendly? Not good.

- And please do contribute whatever you think it will take to make the FAQ better. My habit is to copy edited answers found in the forum over there. Occasionally the categorization of FAQ topics could be better, so I just add cross-references.
If you have actual ideas about making it even "better" then lets do that.

I don't deny your concerns, but what do you actually think can be done? You yourself haven't yet said what's better in your opinion!
I think it would be better if cars used less gas - but that's not the same thing as having a solution to the problem.

I want to pollute this thread. My first post on Drupal.org: http://drupal.org/node/39344

@Gurpartap - Oh my... LOL! Well, luckily no one chased you off. Glad you're here. :)

@Xano - This isn't critical. Sure the forums could be better but they're working and plenty of people are getting answered. If you have concrete suggestions for improvement, I suggest you file specific issues for each (after searching first, of course). This general issue saying they suck without any plan for improvement does no one any good.

Michelle

1. (A KISS set of rules) - These rules already exist. I wrote a bunch of them. The only step beyond having and linking to them is punishing people who break the rules. And that's no fun. And more work.
   Unless you can suggest another enforcement angle...?
2. (creating proper subforums) The subforums exist. Adding more introduces complexity and more chance to get it wrong so I'm not keen... unless you have suggestions about actual topics to add. I don't think that anyone looking for an answer deliberately posts in the wrong place (apart from a few cross-posters who quickly get told off). If someone makes a mistake there, it's borne of ignorance. The only answer to ignorance is education. It can be hard for newbies to know if a problem is from Drupal, a module, a theme, bad HTML/content or just a bad browser. The best result is that they get told, and get it right next time.
3. (Require that users did some research themselves before asking in the forums.) This is already recommended in many places and is a common response in the forums already. We can only be Zen about this and show them the way to find the way.
   At the top of the forum page and the issue queues are already big disclaimers and posting instuctions. I don't think that stronger wording will prevent folk with no nettiquette from continuing to skim over it.
4. (Implement user warnings) I have no opinion here. It could work, but the problem we have is mainly the brand-newbies. They already get 'warned' by others where appropriate, and very seldom (that I have seen) repeat the same mistakes. The same mistakes are repeated by new idiots each day. Formal threats and probation will not prevent these folk.
5. (separate the screaming newbies) A newbie-only forum has been mooted several times but the general result is that it would, (if it worked at all) just remove the people that need help from those that were able to give it. :-( . Not really a solution.

Now, I personally agree with some of your motivation here. I'm actually a bit elitist about web development and have no real interest in hand-holding absolute beginners, or even opening Drupal up further to the oi polloi. At some point these wannabes need to sit down with a book and figure things out for themselves. And therefore become useful members of a community, not just leeches. There are a thousand usernames (almost all from the same country :-/ ) which make me groan every time I see their 'requests'. If it's a good day, I'll maybe point them to the handbook or advise they start learning HTML. Most of the time I just respond "More information needed to solve your task".
I may occasionally be snappy or curt with them, but as much as they annoy me, I still don't want to ban them or anything. I just want them to Ask their questions better.
And that can only happen if they are responded to and given the means to improve. So we don't delete their posts or punish them - we explain why their request may not be answered. So they don't do it again. And the world becomes a better place.

Notwithstanding, I spend a lot of time coaching folk who can demonstrate that they know what they are talking about.

I DO think that requesting that they demonstrate some effort in research is a great move. The difference between request and require becomes one of enforcement however.
Last week I started with a new sig that says exactly that:

If you are asking a question you think should be documented, please provide a link to the handbook where you think the answer should be found. This means we can cross-reference and fill in the answers in the right place for everyone. And also shows you've done a bit of research yourself :-)

... Unfortunately that was too long for a sig, but you get the idea.
So yes, I think that idea is a positive constructive suggestion! And yes indeed, it becomes a usability review of the documentation itself.

I don't know how it could be policed however.

And as far as forum behaviour goes ... repeatedly bouncing your personal agenda up to "critical" after it's been marked down with explanations a few times should be enough to earn a warning! ;-B

I'm going to switch this to "feature request" in the hope that you can define the actionable "feature" you are suggesting... It's a new thing, not an already-solved task.

Idea 1: disable the 'submit' button on the node add form when a user has less than say 20 (configurable of course) posts on d.o. This way, we force them to use the preview button and when that happens, we add our own suggestions above the preview, a bit like Digg does: Digg searches in existing posts that might match yours and asks them to consider looking at them first before actually posting your new story. Also add some help texts like 'if you see a matching unanswered question, post a follow up so it gets bumped at the top of the tracker'. After an amount of posts, we consider our newbie as a 'good' user, bring back the submit button and leave suggestions away, although the latter is debatable (ie: reduce the suggestions from 5 to 2, etc).

This is related to an existing issue posted here: http://drupal.org/node/192714 trying to solve the duplicate issues problem in project queues (the issue also contains other older issues, interesting to read).

Implementation though (as you can also read in the issue(s) above) will be hard. Using the do_search will result in much false positives in the first place I think, but this will force new users to think about this: try searching first, because your question has probably been posted allready.

We might add this to the drupalorg module or maybe as a separate contrib as
a) this kind of functionality in a module doesn't seem to exist yet - unless I didn't search well ;-)
b) I think it might be a quite usefull module anyway :)

Idea 2: extend the pivots module. I haven't actually looked at the code very well, but I see it popping up some times, especially on project pages. If it starts appearing on forum topics as well, users who did their best to search and land on a node will see other matching nodes.
I see the pivots module having good results most of the time, so I guess for implementing idea 1 we should look at its tricks and create a top new feature on d.o.

My 2 cents.

I'm also hoping to extend the "pivots" module to display related posts in forums. It's in my development agenda for the next cycle. Hope the webmasters team would approve that feature.

We are not going to punish people for being ignorant. We are going to continue to try and use peer pressure and the exisitng posted rules. Over complicated solutions that 'punish' people doesn't really build community.

@pivots_test: If you need any help in that cycle, you're free to contact me.

I am marking it postponed on purpose. I have read the issue and ideas presented.

There is a site redesign in the works. Please check groups and continue to work on the ideas you have in concert with that effort.

Xano's proposals in this thread to "force", "moderate", "lock", "ban" or otherwise censure posters who make mistakes are indeed "punishments" - as far as are possible within any forum. And there is clearly no support for this approach.
A quiet moderation system does already exist in the forums, and any troublemakers who repeatedly ignore suggestions, guidelines or warnings in their comment threads can and are dealt with by available d.o. webmasters. Usually quietly and offline, and you may not see the evidence of this system in action as such unproductive occasions are frequently tidied up.
Any more active or blatant policing in this manner would just require more manpower, and probably be unpleasant.
Most of the time, simple instructions in thread replies are enough to cure the newbies ignorance. If you encounter posters who seem deliberately uncooperative, feel free to let them know directly or bring them to the attention of the webmasters in the usual channels. Community policing is sufficient.
The desired result is still the same, and the big sticks you are asking for are available for use in select cases.

Anyway...

In an effort to find an actual workable improvement to address this vague problem, I note that the Drupal.org registration page currently has no reference or link to any terms of use, or even the Forum rules!
Placing a sentence there (possibly as part of the redesign) would at least be easy, practical and hopefully helpful.

I also note that there's not a (easily findable?) privacy policy either. Perhaps this could be on the to-do list.

(I'm almost afraid to bump this up... but I do think it's important especially with the redesign coming up.)

re#26 - would we have a terms of use checkbox on the registration page? Terms/Privacy policy?

Should a link to the forum rules be placed in the Navigation menu?

Can we please rename the Deprecated forums to Archived. (Until I came to Drupal, I had no idea what Deprecated meant - and I still want to call it Depreciated.)

Archived is a little different from deprecated, IMO; deprecated means that are not anymore used, or (as for functions) that should not be anymore used.

I know that Deprecated is here to stay.

But I do think that the forum rules page - wherever it is, as I can never find it unless I do a search for it - should be linked somewhere visible (even if people don't read it.)

http://drupal.org/forum-posting

In trying to minimize incorrectly placed posts in some forums (It's worked to a small degree), General disucssion, Module development as examples, there are forum posting guidelines as stickies at the top of the forums.

VM, there's an old issue about the stickies in forums #215610: Develop README sticky posts for each forum

Thinking this should just be marked as wont fix - it seems to have gotten too general

I think it may still apply as the stickies I created are "very" general and were in response to a forum thread ranting about users not taking the time to read forum descriptions before posting. Therefore the sickies I created could certainly be fleshed out some more.

Should this report be closed, and marked as won't fix?

With the stickies that have been added to the forums this can likely be marked as fixed for now. Those with permissions can flesh out the stickies when the need calls for it.