I’m a little disappointed with aspects of drupal.org at the moment.

After the relaunch under the “new" D7 architecture, project pages show download and install counts frozen on their values of 20 October 2013, while projects released since then have no counts or graphs at all.

Project stats are important. As mentioned here, project stats not only register a module’s growth, they also help make it grow. Are you likely to try out a module that after 2 months shows (incorrectly) that nobody’s interested in it? Probably not. Will the author of the module therefore receive much useful feedback that helps them improve the module at this critical stage of its early development? Nope. Which then in return would have made that module more useful to a larger, more appreciative audience. Which would have resulted in even more participation, more feedback and a better quality module for all to enjoy?

None of that momentum build-up is happening for hundreds of modules created after 20 October. Spanking new, they already look like efforts that never caught on. It’s especially disheartening for newbie developers who after, no doubt weeks of work, have just released their first modules on drupal.org — let’s hope that not getting any feedback will not make them throw in the towel.

Some commenters have already suggested to temporarily switch off stats altogether so as to give all module maintainers the same unfair disadvantage.

But stats are only one example from this aftermath of regressions and UX issues we, members of drupal.org, currently live with.

I salute all the hard-working individuals behind what was and still appears to be a mammoth effort.
It’s a big site. It’s a big deal.

To the majority of us, drupal.org is the prime communication tool and community fostering vehicle. It’s where it all happens. drupal.org could potentially send a great message to the world about Drupal as an enviable platform. It could be the poster child of what is possible with Drupal, in particular in terms of the UX for its 1,000,000 members.

It could be. What are your thoughts?

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