Governance Taskforce Recommendation "Build a New Community Website to Centralize Communication and Promote Opportunities"

The community is a wealth of knowledge and while there may be a link for everything, it is very difficult for people unfamiliar with drupal.org to know where to look. The drupal.org site cannot be all things to all people, it’s time for the community component to be split into something more flexible and robust.

What we heard:

While community information can be held in many places, it is confusing for community members to find content, especially if they are new. Not being able to navigate to information and needing to ask creates a feeling of being an “outsider”. Other projects, such as Joomla!, are better handling this information sharing and transparency through a dedicated community site.

What we recommend:

We recommend building a dedicated community website. Drupal’s community site needs to be re-envisioned to centrally manage all community-related information, opportunities, and efforts.

The community site should consolidate information about events, local groups and associations, and governance. It should aggregate communication from all groups, including the DA, in appropriate formats i.e: blogs, requests for feedback, calls for participation, etc.

The Drupal community is multilingual, and the Drupal community site should be translated into multiple languages. Pathways to participation such as Drupal’s mentoring program, and involvement in specific Drupal initiatives, should be accessible from the new site. Usability, clarity, and end-user needs must be a priority — this should be implemented collaboratively with the Documentation Initiative.

The Community Governance Group would maintain a communication strategy to coordinate community messaging, especially through social media. Many members are unsure how to get information promoted through existing channels. It is hard to identify who manages which social media accounts, and coordinate messaging across these platforms. This negatively affects events as significant as global training days, which impacts recruitment and education.