The Problem

We lack a clear and inviting path from discovering Drupal and learning how to use it to becoming an active and productive contributor. As a result, our most active developers are plagued by the support demands of intermediate users who have outgrown the Drupal.org forums and don't know where to go. This effect is compounded both by our failure to attract and assimilate new highly qualified support-givers, and the myriad bad behaviors that newbies are learning in "newbie ghettos" such as the forums -- behaviors that make it difficult-to-impossible to adequately support them and bring them into the wider Drupal community.

The Solution

• Phase out the Drupal.org forums in favor of a more straightforward Q&A format resource.
• Treat posts that resource as not just the answering of this question here and now, but building a useful searchable reference into the future. Be brutal in eliminating off-topic chatter and duplication (but as kind as possible in explaining why a question was closed) ala StackExchange.
• Provide easy gateways from that resource to more active participation in the Drupal community: IRC, issue queues, doc team, translation teams, GDO, etc.
• Improve the consistency of IRC and Q&A moderation by setting up a venue for moderator docs and discussion.

So, here I am, up far later than planned. If you catch any errors/omissions, please note them in the comments and I'll correct them asap.

Last night I had I had great fun talking about hacker culture with the good folks over at CINLUG, the Central INdiana Linux Users' Group about hacker culture. The session was not recorded, but below are links to the works I referenced, followed by my presentation notes (which are more like a rough outline and may or may not be useful to anyone else).

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References:

These are in no particular order

In the past couple of weeks, I've become increasingly aware of how much conflict younger open source projects I'm involved in have compared to more mature projects and projects run by folks with an extreme number of years in open source.

Then I had to explain to my housemate who Donald Knuth is...
...and tell a fellow Drupalista what the Jargon File is...
...and define "grok" for a colleague from the XMPP community...
...and stifle a laugh while my 7-year-old tried to describe the wumpus to someone who should know better...
...after which I read Eric Raymond's recent post on the social utility of hacker humor.

Then I grokked.

In the projects that have been around for a dozen or more years, or those run by hackers who have been, there is a common culture and identity shared by all: we're hackers. Whatever else we are -- country bumpkins, urbanites, gay, straight, bi, male, female, transgender, a particular religion or nationality, old or young, single or married, parent or not, rich or poor -- we are hackers, and all we need to know to work together is that we share that cultural bond of hackerdom.

I rarely write about feminism.  When I have, it has to point out the foolishness of pushing non-tech women into technology in the name of gender equality, and trying to obscure the ability gap by pressuring competent women to spend too much of their time with the incompetent ones.

This time I'm writing about a brilliant article I came across on twitter (thanks @crell).

Support leeches are a fact of life in the open source world.  Some people don't understand how to be worth supporting.  Others are just so obsessed with their own short-term wants that they are willing to destroy the community they are trying to get support from in the process.  Below are my observations, gleaned from years of actual support leech encounters.

Anatomy

There are two subspecies of support leech, however hybrids are not uncommon:

The Washington Post reported today that Cisco has purchased Jabber, the open instant messaging protocol used by Google, LiveJournal, MySpace, and many others. Unfortunately, the Washington Post isn't smart enough to discern between the purchase of Jabber.com, a Jabber service company, and Jabber a.k.a. XMPP, the protocol.

Update: I found a roommie, yay! I can't wait to see you all at the summit.

I'm trying to figure out how I can attend DrupalCon 2007 at the Open Source CMS Summit sponsored by Yahoo! The summit and related events are free, so it's mostly a matter of child care (got it covered) and affording transportation and the hotel stay. If any non-smokers in Washington would like to carpool to Sunnyvale, or any nonsmoking webmonkeys would like to split a hotel room with an easygoing lady geek, please let me know. I'm a night owl, I don't hog the bathroom, and I'm happy sharing accommodations with geeks of any gender. Please note that I am deathly allergic to cigarette smoke, so not smoking in the car/room isn't good enough -- you really have to be a nonsmoker.