The recent changes to the blocks on project pages* were easily missed by many folks. I didn't think it was worth a whole front page post about deploying those. However, it'd be nice if we had a place to do little updates about things happening on drupal.org -- important bug fixes or new features being deployed, changes of various sorts, infrastructure stuff we want to broadcast to the world, etc. For example, there are certainly times when there's a known bug that triggers a *LOT* of duplicate requests -- it'd be nice to be able to say: "yes, we know X isn't working right now, we're fixing it". Or, e.g. Solr is down, it'd be nice to say "the Solr cluster is having trouble because of X, we're solving it via Y, and expect it to be back up by Z". Whatever it is. Just updates from the infra team about changes to d.o for interested parties to see what we're doing.

There's the @drupal_infra twitter account, but that seems evil and wrong on so many levels for this sort of thing. ;) Pass the dog food, I'm hungry.

I don't know exactly what's the right solution here, maybe another restricted forum (sort of like the security annoucements one) and a block on the front page that shows the titles to and dates of the most recent N posts there?

Any other bright ideas?

Anyone interested in making this happen who wants to champion this issue?

Thanks,
-Derek

* for the interested reader:
#22402: Recent issues block
#371969: Move developer info into a block provided by cvs.module
#425728: Add an "issue cockpit" block for project nodes

Comments

silverwing’s picture

silverwing commented

Another block? It seems like block overkill to me.

How about a link (another link! :) ) to a view page that contains selected posts (site information/upgrades, etc.)

~silverwing

dww’s picture

dww
we/he/they
commented

I just don't think people are going to see the news at all if it's just a link to a page with a list of news. I was thinking along the lines of "New forum topics" -- you can scan that and see the "headlines" on the front page, and drill down to read the stories if you really care...

But yeah, I also fear block overkill. Not sure the right solution. In the redesigned d.o, there will obviously just be a "d.o news" dashboard widget, which would be placed by default -- but until then, not sure the best approach. Also, even if we had the dashboard and such a widget, we'd have to know how to implement that widget -- where is the news actually posted, etc? So, we could already solve a lot of the problem, and provide an RSS feed, and then the final detail of the summary block/widget is easier.

gerhard killesreiter’s picture

gerhard killesreiter commented

Maybe we should just wait for the redesign to be deployed?

dww’s picture

dww
we/he/they
commented

@killes: Thanks for reading... ;)

"even if we had the dashboard and such a widget, we'd have to know how to implement that widget -- where is the news actually posted, etc? So, we could already solve a lot of the problem, and provide an RSS feed, and then the final detail of the summary block/widget is easier."

The redesign doesn't "solve" this on it's own, it just means we'd have a different place to potentially display the headlines. meanwhile, we still need a place to put the news itself.

gerhard killesreiter’s picture

gerhard killesreiter commented

Too much information...

I guess we could start blogging on infra.d.o and aggregate that but then we'd need to change that site's mode of operation.

Maybe everybody just gets his blog added to the Planet and we spam that? Or have a separate aggregated thingie?

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

We do have a news and annoucements forum... It's not _that_ busy and important changes could always be stickied for a while.

Michelle

gábor hojtsy’s picture

gábor hojtsy
he/him
Primary language Hungarian
Location Hungary
commented

Two ideas (or just data points :):

- We have a CVS maintainers list (which now that the latest Drupal is pushed with some FAPI bugfixes also needs fixing). Admittedly, the change was much wider then just the maintainers, but we have a specific channel towards them.
- We also have an infra twitter account. We can advertise that more somehow and use it as such.

dww’s picture

dww
we/he/they
commented

@Gabor: Thanks for the comment.

- We need this for a much wider audience than the CVS newsletter. Changes that *only* effect them can be (and have been) advertised there. I was the one who created the CVS newsletter in the first place, after all. ;) But, we need a place to broadcast news relevant to all d.o site users...

- I mentioned (and linked) the drupal_infra twitter account in my original post. ;)

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

How about "Drupal News" group on g.d.o? It already has the subscription mechanisms. Then a block on d.o could post the past five items of that group.

Cybergarou’s picture

Cybergarou commented

Let me say some words about the people likely to miss changes and post duplicate issues as a result.

I'm sure many of these people are casual Drupal users like me. They come to the site with a specific goal in mind and leave as soon as they accomplish that goal. They might land on the front page and head straight for a project page. The important thing to note about these kinds of people, they aren't going to go to another place on the site to get news. If it doesn't warrant a front page post they won't see it. I don't think they would even bother subscribing to a news feed.

One way of informing these people about something that may affect them is to present a one time message. If an issue is identified or changes have been made since the last time they were on the site, show a message with a simple statement indicating what they should be aware of and give a link for more details. Then any changes to what we have come to expect when visiting the site won't surprise us as much.

If you make it obvious to people that something was purposely changed, they won't freak out when something moves. (Obvious meaning that you can see it from the other side of the room.)

silverwing’s picture

silverwing commented
Issue tags: +drupal.org redesign

tagging

lisarex’s picture

lisarex commented

Linking this from the Redesign project #661566: Meta issue for Drupal.org webmaster project because this issue was tagged 'drupal.org redesign'

drumm’s picture

drumm
he/him
Location NY, US
commented
Status: Active » Closed (works as designed)

I'm fine with announcing things to various places on a case-by-case basis. All the venues listed above are okay for some things. But we aren't really looking to make more blocks right now.