Flickr photo: nodesptDrupal.org is the home of the Drupal Project, serving developers, site builders, and site evaluators, all with unique needs. Meeting the needs of all of these audiences is tough enough for any website, let alone one that is governed by its community. So, over the last year, we’ve been tackling the issue of governance for D.O with three main goals:

1. Resolve issues related to D.O in a timely, transparent, and uniform manner, allowing the community to work more efficiently

2. Address issues of long-term strategic importance to D.O, allowing for proper resource allocation and a frame for short-term decisions

3. Allow for the Drupal Do-ocracy culture to flourish while providing structure and support for community participants

In mid-2012, Dries Buytaert kicked off a Governance process for the Drupal project. Throughout the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013 we worked with various community members on defining the structure of the Working Groups and their responsibilities. Governance would have to cover all the aspects of running an enterprise-level site, and do so in a way that enables the community to make decisions quickly with a clear chain of command that ends at the Drupal Association, which provides the financial and legal support for the site.
 
By January 2013 we had a plan in place - the formation of three Working Groups to focus on Infrastructure, Software and Content. By March drafts of the first charters were written and published for community feedback.
 
Once the charters were reviewed by the community, DA staff started to work on the proposal for how to actually implement the Working Groups, as well as lists of initial Working Group members. Last week on the public Drupal Association board meeting during DrupalCon Portland the Board formally approved both the proposal and working group members. 
We are extremely excited to announce the Working Groups and their members:
 

Infrastructure Working Group

Members:

Software Working Group

  • Responsible for the overall technical strategy for the Drupal.org properties, to empower teams responsible for individual sub-sites and portions of Drupal.org to build and maintain this vision, and to provide them best practices, guidance, and coordination to help expedite decision-making.
  • Charter: https://drupal.org/node/2001496
Members:

Content Working Group

  • Responsible for maintain the processes around product messaging, content moderation, and user experience elements of the Drupal.org websites. 
  • Charter: https://drupal.org/node/2001502
Members:
 
Defining the structure of Drupal.org governance is a huge and very important step for the site. We hope that it will accelerate changes on Drupal.org, help us make better decisions faster and improve website for all its visitors. This is a new experience for all of us, and we don’t necessarily know all the right answers today. But we will do our best to make this work and work well.
 

Where to follow our progress?

  • A new Governance section on Drupal.org contains information on all Working Groups, their charters. Meeting minutes will be published there as well.
  • We will publish regular updates and meeting reports on the Drupal Association blog
  • You can follow Drupal.org on Twitter
  • Join the Drupal.org group where we expect various discussions will take place

Flickr photo: nodespt