Posted by drumm on December 10, 2010 at 7:32am
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| Project: | Drupal.org customizations |
| Version: | 6.x-3.x-dev |
| Component: | User interface |
| Category: | task |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | drumm |
| Status: | closed (fixed) |
| Issue tags: | drupal.org marketplace, drupal.org redesign |
Issue Summary
To replace nodes under http://drupal.org/drupal-services. We want to keep things simple, it is easy to add things but hard to remove.
Name (Drupal core title)
Description (Drupal core body & teaser)
Categories see #371966: Clean up organization-related taxonomy terms
Logo (imagefield)
Link (CCK)
This is a good time to try out features module.
Comments
#1
Needs to check for Drupal Association Organization membership.
#2
I should note that we are considering requiring Drupal Association membership.
#3
The relevant issue about who should (and who not) be included is at #317519: Apoint 2-3 maintainers for the Drupal services list. Nothing has changed. Services should be the page where we recognize our contributors and should be our way to pay back. As I said at http://drupal.org/node/317519#comment-1789664: "Michelle, we are not endorsing but imagine what the price would be if this would be paid advertising (targeted ads on such a high traffic site). So we are using it as an award. There are few ways we can actually give back something of value to the volunteers who pour countless hours into the project and this is one of them."
And, yes, let's split this section into two and have a paid-for services listing totally separate from the award-listing. It could net an astonishing amount of money.
#4
And we should not mandate DA membership as it costs money. The people who are eligible for this page paid with their time, several times over.
#5
Yes, we should use features.module for this. I'm already suggesting that approach over at #648218: Make API changes in Drupal core be nodes. I'd be happy for us to just commit the features as submodules of drupalorg project.
#6
DA membership is not expensive, and I believe we absolutely should require it. Yes, people pay with their time, and they also pay with their $, and that's fine. We're paying for the plumbing here.
This does point out one thing though: we'll need a distinction for Individual contractors and organizations/shops, as those are two different types of DA membership.
#7
Making an organization membership a requirement is a minimal hurdle that allows us to provide these companies with a better service. At 73 Euros the cost is minimal and rarely (if never) a barrier to entry, if it is we can consider a incubator or budding-business scholarship program.
The purpose of asking them to purchase an organizational membership is that it opens up a dialogue between the company and the Association. The company's information is entered into our CRM system and we can track what that company is doing.
Do they attend DrupalCon?
Do they have multiple employees?
Have they received complaints?
Having them in our database also allows us to provide them with better benefits. We can inform them of the latest DrupalCon or the DrupalCamps happening in their area. Also we can group companies together and list them geographically so they can connect with each other. In the past several months our CRM system has connected Drupal companies that worked next to each other for years but never knew of one another.
Finally this minimal 73 Euro contribution pays for a fraction of the upkeep necessary on this page. It was been very difficult if not impossible to get people to volunteer to create this page or to maintain it, having a small budget (mathematically we're talking less than 3K/year) will allow us to provide better services.
#8
Company? What company? These are inviduals (or some are). And yes, 73 EUR is a lot of money (it's a week's salary of a Hungarian nurse just to put it into perspective). Finance it with the paid section as I suggested above.
#9
73 Euros to help fund the organization that is producing 3 DrupalCons per year, purchasing new servers for Drupal.org, donating to OSUOSL, implementing a redesign, funding the migration to GIT and many other things is not a lot to ask. In the end this 73 Euros does not pay for the actual cost of running this page. It does, however, open a dialogue with these companies so that we may provide them with better services. The purpose of the organization membership requirement is not about the funds (although it helps) it is about capturing their business information so that we can create a better service for the business and the users of this page.
I know most if not all of the companies that are currently listed. I'm comfortable with asking each of them to pay the 73 Euros per year fee to be listed. I'm also very comfortable with exploring a scholarship/grant program for those that can not afford the 73 Euros.
We can use the paid section to finance other parts of drupal.org, like new servers.
#10
drumm, what about listing/linking to each of their company's d.o. user profiles?
What about their modules/themes etc they've contributed? <- would have to be vetted by someone with higher permissions, of course.
Additionally, someday, it might be nice for them to have Con badges on display on their node if they attended or sponsored. This says "Hey, we're serious about Drupal"
And while I'm going totally crazy here, eventually would be cool to link the d.o. user profile back to the company profile :D
#11
Lisa,
These are great suggestions and many of them have been discussed. I'd love to see individual discussions around the suggestions.
1) Listing/linking users to each of the company's d.o profiles is pretty straightforward. We implemented this on various DrupalCon websites.
2) Con badges. Awesome, I'm completely down for that. We've also discussed putting a "I'm going to DrupalCon xyz" status on the person's profile and other places on the site. I think it would be a great way to encourage attendance at DrupalCon and make DrupalCon as very strong community centric conference.
3) Module/themes they contributed. These are already listed on the user's profile but not on a company's profile. I think it would be great to list them on the company's profile but the question of who gets credit may be difficult to answer. For example, if Jane works for Company X and builds the Awesome module and then leaves Company X for Company Y does Company X get credit or does Company Y? If we used a simple user reference to the company node the user's contributions would follow the individual. However the company may have funded the development, created the project, and defined the specs for the module. The developer built it and deserves credit but so does the company.
Jacob Redding
#12
There is such a huge disconnect between what Jacob talks about and I talk about that I wonder whether he read anything I wrote here or in the other thread.
The primary reason for http://drupal.org/drupal-services is to give individuals who contributed a lot a free listing so they can earn some well deserved money. As these people might operate in a corporate form it does get a bit more tricky, I admit. But fundamentally, there should be no set criteria that involves money. I really have no idea how to communicate this through if I am not read. Ideas?
#13
chx,
I've read the past thread and I understand where you are coming from.
The list I read at http://drupal.org/drupal-services has companies (and only a small handful of individuals) such as
2bits.com
Achieve Internet
Advomatic
Chapter Three
Development Seed
Drupaltherapy
Gorton Studios
Randy Fay, Suuch Solutions
Tag 1 Consulting, Inc.
Unleashed Mind
emspace.com.au
etc. etc.
Over 90% of these are already organizational members of the Association or somehow financially involved in the Drupal community. Many of them are sponsors of DrupalCamps or DrupalCons. The purpose of asking them to buy an organizational membership before being listed is so that they can be connected to our business community. The Association is ramping up and doing a lot of pretty awesome things (like this redesign) and asking these companies to get involved with the Association creates a reciprocative effect. Adding them into our CRM connects them to our conferences, camps, and other activities the Association is doing. A listing here doesn't necessarily mean they'll be in the loop.
As I mentioned we can explore scholarship/grants to wave the 73 Euro fee.
I am 100% about providing incentives for people to get and stay involved in the Drupal community. We don't want people or companies to be listed because they provide Drupal service, we want them to be listed because they provide patches to core, maintain modules, update the documentation, and are involved in this community. If you participate then you should be recognized for that participation (this is echoing what Lisa pointed out). I see the purchase of an organizational membership as part of that involvement.
I have read your past posts and I do understand that you want to highlight individuals and the work they are doing. The best way of highlighting those individuals is to create a better user profile. Many developers these days are being hired based upon their drupal.org profiles and not their resume. If we can make those profiles really highlight what they have done and are doing for the community not only will the person be rewarded with a good job they'll also want to stay involved in the community. The company/client that hired them will also want them to stay involved in the community.
As I read this thread chx you and I are on the same page the only sticking point is the requirement of purchasing a 73 euro membership. I see it as involvement in the community but I do hear your argument about a financial barrier. I think the best way around this is to provide an option to have that fee waived (grant or scholarship), if a lot of people ask to have the fee waived them we remove it completely otherwise we continue to encourage people to contribute code and to become a member of the Association.
#14
Question: do individuals need to purchase organizational membership, or can they get away with buying an individual membership?
#15
Let me try to write this up as succinct as I can: Have two directories. One paid by community contributors, the other by real money. The latter sponsors the former, the world and dog.
#16
The problem with two directories is it requires end users to make a decision upfront, which listing to browse or search. There really should be one directory. Contributions/payment/"scholarships"/whatever should be disclosed on the node page, #994374: Theme organization nodes and maybe some options for filtering listings, #994370: Marketplace landing and listing pages.
#17
I lean towards one directory, as well. Maybe expose a filter so if they want, an end user could filter down to specifics.
Another thought, although I'm not sure it fits into the d.o design, would be to have little icons in the search results for each listing to show if that provider is an org member, an individual, or if they've contributed to the community in some way (just graphic versions of the toggles)
#18
Sure it can work with one directory as well: either pay by contribution or by money. However, mixing the two is something I will adamantly oppose. If you are contributing, money should not be involved.
#19
From the customer point of view, one directory makes sense. People looking to hire a Drupal company aren't going to be impressed if they've got to search two lists, especially if they don't understand why.
Plus you'd have the problem of memberships expiring and listings getting moved from one list to another. Crazyness. "But they were right here last week!"
Compromise suggestion:
DA members get a DA badge next to their name/in their column.
We can design it in such a way that the extra badge is eye-catchy and will actively work to encourage DA membership.
#20
Make that a contributor badge -- a DA membership can be bought -- while we want to entice that we want contribution even more esp the kind that we want to reward here.
#21
I really don't see what the big deal of asking contributing *companies* to be asked to contribute to the DA, but I have a huge problem with the idea that anyone who contributes to the DA should be listed. Chx- can you find a single company on that list who can't afford a DA membership? Heck, what % of them already do?
#22
We had a very hacked together accounting of our staffs distributions on Advomatic.com based on a set of attributes. Staff profiles include their Drupal ID, and their length of employment at Advo. It then totals up all their contributions and builds a summary of the total on the homepage. You could add user reference to Service Provider, and add and track all the user contributions of their staffs (with both sides sign off of course) within the timeframe of their employment.
Then you could add some game mechanics into it. Service providers and individuals could then receive achievement badges based on activity of their staff. Everyone who is a DA member gets on the list, but there are additional badges for major contributor, minor contributor, core patching star, documentation master,certified to rock, forum king/queen, bug squasher, etc. They could list modules they are actively participating in, maintain and ones that they used to be a part of (separated). Then allow visitors to filter on the achievements etc. Whatever the staff of a company earns as badges, the company receives as well.
I also think it might be a good idea to allow service providers to declare the budgets of projects they'll work on, and allow visitors to filter on that as well. If an end user only has 5k, they need to be able to easily identify who can help them, and vice versa.
#23
This is a very good idea, but I was thinking it might be good just to put something like "Contributions from Current Staff" and use the "Current Job" on the user profile to determine who shows up where.
I love this idea, although some of these items are not going to be measurable (forum activity, patches committed to contrib projects, etc), and thus code commits may be the main/only part that can be automated (maybe we can get more useful 'patch' statistics from Git- I'm not sure what stats we'll be gleaning from Git- I'm guessing patches are mostly a thing of the past now). What I'd love to do is combine this with some manual items--like the current checkboxes on d.o. for "I did X" or "I attended Y", but it would need to be more vetted and we'd have to have an idea about what the relative values of different contributions are (for example, being the Docs lead is prob. more valuable than attending a DrupalCon).
On another note, a related conversation has been occurring at #371972: How will featured listings on the marketplace work?
#24
After reading through this and all the related issues, here’s my synthesis / suggestion:
A. Add a note to the new Marketplace page:
“The Drupal Marketplace is currently restricted to Members of the Drupal Association. Non-members who provide Drupal services are listed on the Available for Hire page.” (http://groups.drupal.org/available-for-hire)
This note would flag the fact (to people browsing and to aspiring listees) that the Marketplace is currently not comprehensive, but also links to “the rest”.
The members-only rule would enable jredding to capture all entities listed in the Marketplace in his DA CRM system, generating plenty o’ benefits for plenty o’ stakeholders, and incentivise aspiring listees to become a paid member.
B. Introduce 4 categories of Drupal Association membership:
1. Member – “I paid to be perceived as a good Drupal citizen this year”
2. Student Member – “The Drupal Association granted me a free membership this year”
3. Honorary Member – “I’m so cool, my Drupal.org peers have rewarded me with free membership this year”
4. Life Member – “I’m so freaking awesome, my Drupal.org peers have rewarded me with free membership forever”
(BTW, there’s probably a better label than “Honorary”.)
3 and 4 would address chx’s concern that top Drupal contributors shouldn’t have to pay to be listed in the Marketplace (via DA membership), and that some simply couldn’t afford the DA membership fee.
2 was already suggested/implied by jredding.
Organisations would only be eligible for category 1 membership.
C. The process for determining who is awarded Honorary DA membership (and therefore instant cred and instant Marketplace listing) could initially be the same as the current process for determining who gets listed in the Services Listing page (the Webmasters +1), but in the future it could become more democratic & automated.
D. Webchick’s comments #13 thru #16 over here http://drupal.org/node/371972 and proindustries here at #17 and lisarex here at #19 suggest ways to visually tag Marketplace listees to reflect relevant attributes, including DA membership status.
(The new Marketplace prototype on the Infrastructure site already includes both paid and free listings, which will further empower people browsing the Marketplace directory to assign relative weight to the claims of the orgs/people listed. And raise money.)
My suggestions won’t solve everything, of course, but I think it might be a simple way to address, at least partially, several separate-but-related issues.
(And BTW, I agree with drumm that there should ideally be a single marketplace/directory. “The rest” should eventually be incorporated into the Marketplace, and just tagged/rated/categorised/tiered/weighted appropriately. The current fragmentation gives too many people the impression that there are only a few dozen Drupal shops in the world.)
That’s my 2 cents. And yes folks, I know I’m a Johnny-come-lately to this, but if I’m going to be considered freaking awesome one day I have to start somewhere ;)
#25
#994374: Theme organization nodes is the issue for showing this data, it could use a good summary of this discussion.
For referencing employees, I plan on using the existing "Current company or organization" profile field, string matching the title. This already exists (except typos); and I think it is good to keep individual reputation in the hands of users. No user reference fields with this plan. In general, summarize contributions on user pages (file issues), then we can summarize the users on on company pages. It will look a bit basic when launched, then improved.
#26
I filed #1065416: Streamline organization node review for the mechanics of reviewing companies. For who gets approved, I think should keep this as a webmaster process. New rules, like Association membership, need to go through an issue in Webmasters and get http://drupal.org/node/1000788 updated.
#27
Attached is a screenshot of the proposed create organization form.
I decided to change "service provider" to "organization" to be more broad and match the language used at http://association.drupal.org/membership. (Just about wording, not membership requirement or lack thereof.)
As always, do look out for related issues like, #1065416: Streamline organization node review and #994374: Theme organization nodes. I'm currently thinking things like location and language are best left in user profiles and aggregated on organization pages.
#28
Sorry, bad screenshot above, look at this.
Also, #371966: Organizing service provider listings with taxonomy for budget, services, and sectors. Short version: let people enter anything during preview; then make a curated taxonomy before launch.
#29
I think it looks pretty good. I really like the idea of users self-selecting where they work, and their information populating the content of the page. However, it would be great if there was a "projects contributed to" node reference for projects, that way companies that sponsor development (or those that lose key staff) don't lose credit for the work that they paid for. I guess it could just go into the text area, but I personally think it would be neat to see what modules had the most company support, as well as just how many modules are supported/maintained by Drupal shops (I suspect a lot of them). IMO, it would be appropriate to have two lists, one of self-reported module/theme/profile/features development/maintenance ("Stuff we've supported") as well as an automated list of modules that self-reported employees have committed too ("Stuff our current staff has worked on").
I'd also like to see a "headquarters" field, but I realize that it's not appropriate for all firms (i.e. it doesn't do much for virtual companies).
#30
Attached is the (git) patch for all this.
For projects (modules/themes/...), I think I'd rather see that node reference on module pages, with a text field for what they specifically contributed, repeated as a group, on the project nodes. Currently, the common practice is to put that info on project pages, this would formalize it.
I'm looking into geography.
#31
Looking good! My 2 cents...
* Budget should be several named ranges, as bullets or dropdown. Ranges like 'less than $2,999', $3,000-$4,999, $5,000-$10,000 etc.
* Budget should indicate a currency, probably US$
* Logo should display some pixel dimension restrictions (and will it be enforced automagically?)
* Relabel 'Description' to 'Organization description' and let's suggest some subheadings for them if people can't write their way out of a box... key team members seems like a good one, until we get to a point where we can user reference folks
#32
I typed bullets but I mean radio buttons :)
#33
Budget is free-form for the preview period, we'll see what people enter. Then probably lock it down to a multi-select taxonomy, with EUR & USD ranges in each term name. Could certainly go down an over-engineering hole with that one. #371966: Clean up organization-related taxonomy terms is the issue for the various related vocabularies.
The logo is resized on node view with imagecache.
Be sure to see #994374: Theme organization nodes for what it looks like.
#34
The marketplace is getting ready to launch on Drupal.org and it is a great time to revisit our terms for listing. There is significant demand for a listing on drupal.org and we are expecting well over 300 companies apply to be listed, next week alone we know of 30 companies that will be submitting new organization nodes for listing. Obviously this is going to generate a significant amount of issues in the webmaster issue queue.
I propose that we modify our terms and conditions to maintain our current contribution requirements and add the requirement of an organization membership with the Drupal Association. Free membership can granted to any organization that requests them. However, all organizations must first and foremost meet the contribution requirement in order to be listed. No company can simply purchase a membership and be listed without becoming a part of our community. However, the requirement will help to be a barrier of participation such that the webmaster's queue is not overwhelmed with requests.
Contribution is gold.
The modifications I propose to #1000788 are:
How do I get listed in the Marketplace?
The following elements are weighed in determining eligibility for inclusion on Drupal marketplace:
1) Code contributions, in the form of modules, patches to modules, or patches submitted against core. In the case of companies with multiple developers, or of companies who have sponsored development, please include links to the projects your company has worked on. If your developers want to contribute directly, this page provides an overview.
2) Design firms with contributed themes.
** If your contributions include helping in the forums or writing documentation, highlight the areas where you have contributed.
** If you have contributed by doing Drupal advocacy and outreach, write up these experiences in the Drupal Showcase forum on Drupal.org.
** If you have contributed by testing patches, fixing bugs, running unit tests, etc, highlight the projects where this work has occurred.
The following aspects can weigh against your application:
** A brief membership on Drupal.org. If you have been a member of the site for a brief time, you should explain how your work has directly contributed to and benefited the Drupal community.
** A lack of documented contributions. The Drupal community is big, and growing bigger. If people can't see your contributions through your tracker or know you by reputation from your work within the development or documentation lists, you will need to specify how you have contributed.
To be listed in the service directory:
1) Purchase an organization membership from the Drupal Association (link).
** If you can not afford an organization membership you may apply for a free membership by submitting this form (link)
2) Create your organization's listing and note your contributions to the Drupal project.
Let's get this next part of the redesign up and live on drupal.org!
#35
@jredding, let's post that in a separate issue in webmasters. I'd like to keep this issue focused on the actual node type. Some copy & logic will be affected by the policy. For example, published by default or not.
#36
done.. and moved over.
#37
That policy issue is #1103306: Modification to marketplace T&C
#38
Also, @jredding, please let us know if you are speaking on behalf of yourself or the DA Board with regards to this change to d.o. policy...
#39
This is now deployed. I'm doing some testing now and then giving out some permissions. This is a soft launch.
Please file issues separately, in either infrastructure, drupalorg, or bluecheese, and be sure to tag "drupal.org marketplace"
#40
Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.