Hello Readers,

The word "Page 3" might have sent your grey cells into a tizzy. Aint It??? I know.. i know... what does a tech company like gloscon has anything to do with Newspapers and leave alone Page 3. Yes... i am not going to talk anything close to entertainment, leave alone gossip but this blog is entirely related to technology and more so, Drupal.

To people who might not know what Page 3 actually is. Page 3 refers to the 3rd page of a paper which is usually filled with Gossips, columns and news about the movers and shakers of a city, country etc. People actually clamour to get a post in that page, which in turn gives them visibility. Some people come on the page just because of what they are, they get publicity because of what's in them. But some actually bend backwards to get to the page. They consider being on the page to be their right and even get a worth news item out of the page so that news about them finds good space.

As far as Drupal is concerned, it might not be too vague to classify the front page of Drupal as Page 3, where all the latest news about Drupal and related to Drupal is published. I dont know whether it is good to draw comparisons between these two but i found the two to have a whole lot of similarties.

Drupal front page is the face of Drupal. Anything that is new, useful, relevant to the Drupal community is published on that page. Front page usually has the latest Drupal versions, Announcements, websites based on Drupal and case-studies. Any news item that finds a place on the front page has some relevancy attached to it. Is the item contributing to the community, is the community getting back something out of it?

Case-Studies are something i would like to highlight here. Case-studies, in short, throws some light on how a website was created using Drupal, what modules were used, is there some learning or knowledge that can be gained from the case-study. All this is presented in a brief case-study that becomes a part of the larger library of Case-studies on Drupal. Some case-studies get to see the front page and some simply find a place in the library. All this being decided by a group of webmasters who are part of the Drupal Association. (Since Drupal is an open source CMS, it is not managed by a company but an Association).

Although the parameters for getting a case study on the front page is still unclear, i think it should be the details, insights into the project and knowledge that a case-study imparts. Case-study could be a for a multi-billion customer or a small client, could be developed by a Giant or a relatively unknown company. But that shouldnt be the criteria for selecting a case-study for the front page. It should be the knowledge that it imparts and what the developer is trying to share with the community as a whole. That is what is important. That should be the prime concern for an evaluator to judge whether a case-study should be pushed to the front page or be a part of the library of case-studies.

I dont want to cite any incidence or give out names. That wont be good. I just want to point out an anomaly that is present in the management of affairs at Drupal.org. I am sure they are doing a good job at handling Drupal but are they really doing it in an unbiased way is something that is still to be looked into. 

I think i have put my point forward. Now it is upto the people to decide what is a right parameter to push a case-study or for that matter any news article on the front page of Drupal. 

Cheers and may Drupal live longer then ever!!!

Rajat ;-)