Talk:Drupal/Archives/2008/February

Advert

I've tagged this article as advertisement again. From its history, cruft will be added again and again. I'm not monitoring the additions. So, someone should watch over this. I'm just spot checking it's obnoxious nature.

What I'm saying is I doubt anyone reads this other than those that want to delete it because of its Advert nature, like me.

--meatclerk 08:18, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Someone noted the article is stable. This is true, but only one section, Content Management System, does not read like advertisement.

--meatclerk 05:20, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. The entire article is simply descriptive of Drupal. The lead paragraph provides a nice, simple, accurate description of what the software does. It's no more an "advertisement" than it would be an advertisement to say that Excel is a spreadsheet program or that QuarkXPress is a page layout application. If it were an "advertisement," it would make some attempt at persuasive claims, such as "Drupal is the best content management system on the web." This article doesn't do that.

I should add that since Drupal is free, open source software, there isn't a company making money from selling it, so there's not much incentive for anyone to advertise it. There is, however, a need for a reference where people can find a succinct desciption of what it is and what it does, and that's exactly what this article provides. I personally found this article a couple of years ago when I was first trying to learn about Drupal, which I had discovered from other research was the software used to develop "DeanSpace" for the Howard Dean campaign. This article served me well then as an introductory reference source, which is exactly what an encyclopedia article should do. If my experience is any indication, Jessemonroy is completely wrong when he doubts that anyone reads this other than people like himself who want to delete it. I see that in some if his discussion with User:Eloquence, Jesse says he knows "nothing about Drupal, nor am I interested." If he's not interested in it, that's fine by me, but ignorance is a poor basis for decisionmaking. Jesse should stop trying to deprive other people of access to information about Drupal, because there is interest in it. Just last week I gave a talk to nonprofit organizations about free, open source content management systems, and the audience showed plenty of interest in learning about both Drupal and MediaWiki, which were the two examples that panelists talked about the most.

I'm also somewhat dismayed that User:Eloquence has deleted some of the details from this article, such as a longer list of websites powered by Drupal. As someone who has used Drupal to create several websites, I have frequently found that list useful. I used it less than a month ago to check out examples of what other Drupal developers have done with the software by way of theming and layouts. The list had a couple of errors, but overall I found it quite helpful. --Sheldon Rampton 05:49, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

--I'm afraid I don't see the point in having a huge list from Wikipedia here. Also, this article does read like it was written by a bunch of Drupal supporters (I am slowly converting, so no flame here). I don't think it follows Wikipedia standards for objectivity, and, yes, it reads like an advert. (Zach Beauvais 15:00, 5 July 2007 (UTC))

There's a fairly good directory of such sites, which is now linked from the article. There's a risk of the article becoming a spam/ad magnet for anyone running a Drupal site, so I think the guideline that any site listed should have its own Wikipedia article (i.e. meet WP:WEB) is reasonable.--Eloquence* 15:03, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I see your point, but drupalsites.net is a really long list of sites running Drupal, and personally I preferred the shorter, better-culled list that I used to be able to find here. (Also, drupalsites.net seems to load incredibly slowly when I visit it.) And why did you remove the list of "communities centered around Drupal development"? I've never used that information myself, because all of my work with Drupal thus far has been in English (although it appears that I may soon be involved in setting up a couple of bilingual sites). I noticed that http://londoncommons.net was on the list of "communities centered around Drupal development" when in reality it seems to be simply a plain old Drupal-powered website. However, I think the other sites mentioned on that list might be useful to some people who are trying to get started using Drupal. Moreover, the list of companies that develop Drupal sites is a useful resource and ought to be reinstated. The Drupal site has a list of companies offering Drupal-related services, but for some reason they don't even list Bryght.com and Echoditto.com, both of which are important developers. The existing list that you deleted here was arguably too long, but I don't think it should be deleted entirely. Finally, why did you delete the mention of the Drupal Theme Garden? That's one of the first places someone would go when trying to figure out how to customize the look and feel of their website?

I haven't added any of this stuff back yet, but I'd like your comments on why you think it doesn't belong. However, I have added a link to CivicSpace under the list of Drupal distributions. The CivicSpace distribution has some important features, such as CiviCRM integration, which are really important for nonprofit organizations or anyone who wants to do Drupal-based social networking. --Sheldon Rampton 18:17, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Like trivia sections, long external link sections encourage thoughtless drive-by addition and risk turning Wikipedia from an encyclopedia into a web directory. That's why I prefer this standard: If you think a site is notable, write an article about it -- if it survives, it may make a worthy addition to the list. Sites like Spread Firefox and Ourmedia are clearly notable; however, London Commons is not and was in fact recently deleted (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/London Commons). I've added a bunch of other sites found via Special:Whatlinkshere/Drupal.--Eloquence* 23:42, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that London Commons isn't noteworthy enough for inclusion here. However, I'm not sure I agree that suitability for inclusion in a Wikipedia article is an appropriate basis for deciding whether a site is notable. From my point of view as someone who wants this article to be a useful reference, I want a short list rather than a long list of Drupal sites, but what I want to be able to find in the short list are examples of sites that are notable for their use of Drupal, not for their own importance as websites. As an example, the Ann Arbor District Library doesn't really deserve an article about itself in Wikipedia, but its website, which is powered by Drupal, is something that I really appreciated being able to find here, because it is well-designed and uses some innovations that set it apart from a lot of other, quickly-assembled Drupal sites. (For example, the developer has added RSS feeds and social networking features, even letting library patrons add their own marginalia to Ann Arbor's virtual card catalog.) I also think the Carter for Nevada site is a good representative example of a Drupal-based political campaign site (mostly because I like the visual design). The Ann Arbor library site is interesting because it is innovative, and the Jack Carter site is interesting because it is not terribly innovative but rather representative of a genre, but your standard for inclusion doesn't consider either of these factors. Simply using "inclusion in Wikipedia" as a standard can become a rather circular argument and doesn't take into account the judgment and knowledge of people who happen to know Drupal well. (Since Wikipedia has a Jack Carter page that lists his website, I suppose I could argue that it meets your standard for inclusion, but actually I think the Ann Arbor site is the more interesting of the two.)

Anyway, that's my opinion on the matter. After some reflection, I've added back links in the article to Drupal's API reference and the Drupal theme garden, both of which are very helpful to anyone who is trying to develop a website in Drupal. There's certainly nothing resembling "promotion" or "advertising" in an API reference, but I find that I resort to it constantly when I'm coding something, and I think anyone who is seriously interested in using Drupal would appreciate having it mentioned. --Sheldon Rampton 06:29, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Once we decide that a particular website is worth including not because it is independently notable (or associated with a notable entity), but because it does something novel or unique, we are drawing an original conclusion, which is explicitly not permitted per Wikipedia:No original research.--Eloquence* 11:21, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Sure, I support the principle of no original research. However, virtually every article in Wikipedia in some way reflects judgment calls made by the people who have edited it, and they rarely provide documentation to support those judgment calls. The need to do so only arises when there is a dispute about something.

In the case of the Ann Arbor Library District website that I mentioned above, I can present "non-original research" showing that it is independently notable. Here, for example, is a news release from the American Library Association declaring that aadl.org was recently selected by the ALA as "the best library site in the nation." That's not my conclusion, that's theirs. (For the record, I have not been involved in any way with the design of aadl.org, nor have I ever met the web designer.) I first discovered the AALD website because it was listed in this article by someone else. I don't know why they added it, but I think it was a good judgment call. For someone who is trying to learn about Drupal and what it can do, the AALD website is well worth looking at -- even though the library district itself probably doesn't merit a Wikipedia article.

I think the underlying concern here is that Wikipedia articles should not become attractors of linkspam, and that's a perfectly valid concern. However, I think it is highly unlikely that someone affiliated with the library added the link so they could drive up traffic to their site.--Sheldon Rampton 15:52, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I see no reason in principle why the Ann Arbor District Library shouldn't have an article (and indeed, there is already a GFDL source from which to draw). If the website meets WP:WEB (and it appears it does, having received a prestigious award), then that article would be the right context to write about it.--Eloquence* 16:52, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

WP:WEB says it is a guideline for whether "the content of a website or the specific website itself should have an article on Wikipedia." I read the word "itself" to mean that it is not a guideline for whether a website needs to be this notable simply to be listed within other articles. Of course it would be appropriate to mention the library's website within an article about the library, and I think this would be appropriate even if the website had never received any awards. Would you argue that Cato Institute article shouldn't include a link to their website unless the site itself has won an award from somewhere? If this rule applies, Wikipedia has a lot of pruning to do.

What we're discussing here, though, is the question of what standard should determine whether a Drupal-powered website should be included in the Drupal article. I think the goal should be to have a short list (on the order of 10 sites) that are notable because either (1) they are highly trafficked (as is the case for the Onion website); (2) recognized for their innovative features or quality of their design (as is the case for aadl.org); or (3) they exemplify a common class of Drupal-powered websites (as is the case with carterfornevada.com). In the case of criterion #3, carterfornevada.com is a good example of the use of Drupal for a political campaign website. I don't think it's necessarily a better or worse example than others such as votepaul.org or jerrybrown.org or blantonforcongress.com, so I would suggest just choosing one in order to keep the list short. Likewise, I think there should be one example of a Drupal-powered citizen journalism website, and one example of a Drupal website for an NGO, etc.

From what you've written, I would infer that you may agree with me about criteria 1 and 2, but might have some qualms about including examples that only meet criterion #3. The fact that there are certain "common classes" of Drupal-powered websites (such as political websites) can be easily demonstrated without original research, by referring to published books and essays that have been written about Drupal. The question then becomes whether it is appropriate to include selected examples of a class, when the examples that we select will necessarily be somewhat arbitrary. However, there are at least precedents suggesting that Wikipedia articles can sometimes provide examples to illustrate a topic: e.g., here's an article about Perl regular expression examples, or look at the examples section in dynamic programming. Sheldon Rampton 19:17, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm the last person to make a strong case that WP:NOR needs to preclude rational thought and discourse; in fact, I feel it is often overapplied to that effect. What I am concerned about is to have a list of links where everyone will then come here and argue why their site is the most important and greatest one (or worse, that the link section will again deteriorate, as it has, into a free-for-all). If you feel that the examples you mention can be embedded into the prose (rather than the list of sites with Wikipedia articles) in a manner that makes sense -- citing the links as footnotes, not as external links -- that would seem like a good compromise to me.--Eloquence* 21:37, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've added a paragraph and a four-item bulleted list to the "content management system" section. The examples I've chosen are either ones I've mentioned above, or they seem to me to exemplify a common use of Drupal. None of the examples I've included are websites that I've worked on myself (although I did meet the designer of carterfornevada.org once at a workshop). For each item on the list except "citizen journalism," I've only included one website that exemplifies that category. For citizen journalism, I provided two examples because I couldn't decide between the two I included. (Bluffton Today has gotten a fair amount of press recently, but I think H2OTown is older, and they have a really cute little video.)

I've also added some discussion giving a few pros and cons of Drupal as compared to other popular content management systems. Hopefully, including some of the cons along with the pros will address the perception that this article is an advertisement.

With respect to the question of how to prevent a link-adding "free-for-all," I think the three general guidelines I mentioned above should provide a basis for limiting the number of links that get added. For inclusion as an example anywhere in the article, a site should be either (1) high-traffic, (2) demonstrably innovative or noteworthy, or (3) typical of a common class; and only one or two examples should be chosen to exemplify sites that belong to a common class.

And of course, if you disagree with any of my edits, by all means feel free to revise accordingly. --Sheldon Rampton 05:18, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Precedence is always a good measure. As such, I have reviewed about a dozen languages to see what they have done. They include Perl, C, C++, Tcl,Smalltalk, Prolog, BASIC, LISP, Dylan, Python, Scheme_programming_language and Logo_programming_language. All these seem to have a decent style. They should be references, not examples.

That said, what it does and how it works is more important than, who uses it, or has used it, or even considered using it.

I'll refrain from commenting on the section about free software and open source, that is besides the point. The article has along way from being anything resembling(sp?) good. My suggestion is add to it make it noteworthy and don't argue with me. You won't get a sympathetic ear.

--meatclerk 06:00, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, at least we've managed to move you away from trying to delete it in its entirety. As for whether you have a sympathetic ear, I'm not interested at all in arguing with you, nor do I care whether you're sympathetic to this article. You've shown no evidence that you actually know anything about Drupal, and as I stated previously, ignorance is a poor basis for editorial judgment. By the way, Drupal is not a programming language. It is a content managment system. If you want to compare apples to apples, look at examples such as the articles on Joomla! or Scoop or PostNuke. --Sheldon Rampton 06:29, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

We could be talking about plums; this article is far below par. My reference were NOT examples. Please read my last message again.

I looked at your examples. This article is far below par. Your examples help my case.

Please improve Drupal. And forget about me. I'll just watch.

--meatclerk 04:22, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Even being a strong Drupal aficionado I have to admit the article is too advert-like. The Joomla Article reads more neutral. So we should improve it. Luckily, it has made a task in DROP (an internal child in spirit to Googles GHOP). Hopefully this will settle the discussion. Wikipedia is, or tries to be, an encyclopedia. And as such, it has to ban biased Articles, so we got the ball, let's play it well.

--- I just searched for this article because I wanted to know what Drupal was. --- ~~ Spunner 12-Nov-07 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.104.191.131 (talk) 02:45, 13 November 2007 (UTC)