Please put link to "Forums" back in the "Community" pulldown menu

Created on 28 October 2023, about 1 year ago
Updated 20 January 2024, 10 months ago

I recently noticed that the link to "Forums" was replaced with a link to "Drupal Slack" in the "Community" pulldown menu. I haven't seen this radical change to our UI announced anywhere, or the rationale behind this decision explained. I think the Forums on Drupal.org so far has served has the primary locus for support for technical support for community members and they are still needed. I don't perceive Slack as a suitable replacement, for the following reasons:

  • Walled garden. Content not indexed for search by external search engines (this is a blocker for me).
  • Closed source/proprietary (Re: Open Web Manifesto β†’ ).
  • The community lose ownership of all content created there.
  • Requires users to register a separate account, not tied to Drupal.org account.

Slack is not built to serve as a support forum. It seems to mainly be intended to serve as a real time chat service. If nobody happens to be around to answer your support question when you ask it, you usually receive no reply. It is not really designed for accumulating knowledge, but for quick exchanges and announcements. It is very hard to find information on Slack about a specific topic if it has been asked a few weeks ago.

There is also Drupal Answers (https://drupal.stackexchange.com/), which IMHO is far superior to Slack. If you're determined to deprecate Drupal Forums, that would be a better replacement than Drupal Slack. However, it is not beginner-friendly. It has very strict requirements about the type of question you're allowed to ask. If you transgress this, the response is harsh. Drupal Answers is great for sharply focused technical questions, and already my first port of call when googling for a solution. But it provides a bad UX for non-techical people and beginners. However, if Drupal.org Forums stay deprecated, Drupal Answers is the place I personally will start to use a a replacement for Drupal.org Forums to provide and to get technical support. So far, it does not look as if Drupal Slack will ever become a productive place where I shall be willing to spend time.

πŸ“Œ Task
Status

Active

Version

3.0

Component

User interface

Created by

πŸ‡³πŸ‡΄Norway gisle Norway

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Comments & Activities

  • Issue created by @gisle
  • πŸ‡³πŸ‡΄Norway gisle Norway

    Fixed typos in issue summary.

  • πŸ‡©πŸ‡°Denmark ressa Copenhagen

    Thanks @gisle, I very much agree with everything you stated, except for the bit about transitioning to Stack Exchange. It may serve as an alternative support forrum, but I think https://www.drupal.org/forum/ β†’ should forever stay, and be an eternal source of help for people new to Drupal, under the control of the Drupal community.

    See also Forum "deprecated" from home page? β†’

  • πŸ‡³πŸ‡΄Norway hansfn

    I totally agree - we shouldn't promote Slack that heavily. (For the reasons stated by Gisle.)

    In stead of adding back the link to "Forums", I prefer "Support" pointing to https://www.drupal.org/support β†’

    PS! I also can't remember having seen any discussion about this change. Maybe it was on Slack - he-he.

  • πŸ‡³πŸ‡ΏNew Zealand john pitcairn

    Anything that can't be googled should not be an official support forum. Dries' recent Lille keynote was very big on pushing the open web - Slack isn't that.

    I doubt all the devs on Drupal Slack will be all that thrilled with a bunch of non-coder support requests clogging things up either.

  • πŸ‡©πŸ‡°Denmark ressa Copenhagen

    @Jaypan reminded me of a very relevant issue in Forum "deprecated" from home page? β†’

  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States hestenet Portland, OR πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

    For now( because getting into the details of which specific options we should and should not be leading with from the main nav is a really difficult topic) I'm going to follow @hansfn's suggestion of 'Support' which points to the landing page with all of the various options described.

    I'll circulate this to some of the #promoteDrupal initiative folks who've worked on the latest rounds of iterative suggestions for the navigation - see if they want to chime in with any thoughts here as well.

  • πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦Canada pixelite Montreal

    The issue with the Forums is that people aren’t actively interacting there and much of the content is outdated. Prominently linking to Forums gives the impression to new users that the Drupal community is not active.

    That’s the reason for removing the direct link to it from the main navigation.

  • πŸ‡³πŸ‡΄Norway gisle Norway

    Well, hiding them from the main navigation is not probably not going to increase participation.

    The fundamental problem is that the community need some locus where beginners and non-technical people can got to get first line community support, and so far, the Forum is theonly that thing the community have.

    If it is perceived as a place with too little interaction and too much outdated content, perhaps there can be some sort of #promoteDrupal led effort to:

    1. get more people to interact
    2. curate the content by getting rid of the bad bits

    I am already trying to do my bit, by providing some support there - mostly to beginners.

    If there were a team curating it, for example by reviewing some of the decade old content and to identify ROT (Redundant, Outdated, Trivial) to vote on for removal, I would volunteer some f my time for that task as well.

  • πŸ‡©πŸ‡°Denmark ressa Copenhagen

    I agree @gisle, instead of strangling the forum, it should be nurtured, improved, and better marketed. One dearly needed improvement is ✨ Provide file upload for forums Active , which would lift the user experience.

    Also, I don't agree that people aren’t actively interacting in the Forum.

  • πŸ‡©πŸ‡°Denmark ressa Copenhagen

    FYI, I just created πŸ“Œ Add link to Drupal Forums in Olivero Welcome text Needs review to help make new users aware of this wonderful resource.

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