There's currently a discussion going around twitter about the idea of a Drupal App Store. Now, I don't actually want to talk about the merits and problems of the idea itself. From what I can tell, what this really is meant to be is a conversation starter for a presentation that Robert Douglass is giving in Brussels. And the idea of an App Store has some very interesting ramifications, some positive, and some negative.

But as I said, that's not what I need to get off my chest.

Apparently I've been sort of ignoring an increased friction between Drupal designers and developers the last few days. Not that I don't know it's there, I'm right up in the forefront of that friction, feeling fairly regularly told what to do by people who I feel aren't fully informed as to why I created things the way I did. And most often I don't react well to this, and I cause more friction than I really should. But this isn't just about me. That friction is there and it's all around.

I don't normally make political statements on this blog, but this issue is so important I feel like I should.

So, after two years, I've finally gone and done it.

I've unchecked the box that enables people to contact me via drupal.org. It pains me to have to do this, because there are legitimate reasons to use this form to contact me.

An incredibly common complaint about Drupal is in that its terminology is often arcane and difficult to understand. And while the substance of these complaints are actually right, many people come to what I consider the wrong conclusion, and it's this wrong conclusion that is actually the root of what is currently wrong with Drupal's use of terminology.

Let's take a look at some actual problems with terminology.

Taxonomy

Ok, if the first sentence of your comment is "I'm sorry, this isn't really related to this post" I'm going to delete your comment without reading it.

If you are having a problem with a module, http://drupal.org/support -- your resources are there. My blog -- and as far as I know, pretty much all blogs -- are not a Q&A. Nor is my email box, for those of you have forgotten my rant on that topic from last year.

Forums. Issue queue. These are where support requests go. Thanks.

Step 1: Abuse your administrative privileges to post a discussion in a place reserved for announcements and marketing material.
Step 2: Actively insult most of the primary contributors to the project.
Step 3: Use misinformation to back up your salient points.
Step 4: Refuse to stop using this misinformation after you get called on it.
Step 5: Insist that "how things are" is different from how things are.
Step 6: Insist that you're saying something different from what you're saying. Ignore it when people call you on it.

If you're one of those people who wants to help with Views, but you have no idea what to do, and your helping is going to require me to spend more time explaining the architecture to you than I would spend actually getting work done, your help is not valuable to me.

Sorry if this comes off as mean, but right now I'm a giant freakin' obstacle and I'm getting a little tired of having it pointed out to me twice daily, with a whole bunch of people offering to help, but few apparently willing to do things the Drupal Way and just read the damn code, figure out what needs to be done and do it.

In Drupal 6, FAPI 3 is finally getting to the point where it's powerful enough to do some of the things that it's been a real bear to do with it. For one, in Drupal 6 it now has image buttons, and using form alter you can now directly replace a regular submit button with an image button pretty easily. And submit buttons have their own submit and validate functions attached, so it's now very easy to have different buttons operate completely independently. This is a major improvement.

"Jesse", a blogger who apparently has just one article and either wants to build a reputation for a new venture or simply wants to be anonymous (hard to say which) posted a fairly long article on his site called 4 problems with Drupal.

I read this article, and I started out a little annoyed. It makes some false or at least misleading assertions. I immediately commented on one obvious one, and then as I thought about it, I felt a need to address the entirety of his arguments, because they are, in all, flawed.