Evolving Community Governance - Survey Results and a Call to Action

These results and analysis were initially presented at the DrupalCon Vienna community summit on September 25, 2017.

Following numerous blog posts, official statements, community discussions, social media interactions, and Slack and IRC conversations over the last few months, there is a clear consensus that it is time for Drupal's community governance to evolve. We need to not only define what governance means to us as a community, but also clarify the roles and responsibilities of those within our community leadership and governance structures. We also need to draw clearer distinctions between the different forms of community, project, and technical governance, and make sure that everyone understands how they interact with and support each other.

Ultimately, this will need to be a collaborative process that involves all stakeholders, including Dries and the Drupal Association (especially where matters of legal and financial responsibility are concerned), but the first step is to create a framework so that the community can participate productively in the process. The question that remains to be answered is what that process will look like.

Results of the Governance Summit Survey

The Drupal Association, with help from Whitney Hess, conducted a Community Governance Summit survey in an effort to gain insight into how the community would like to proceed. 568 people responded to the survey, with most questions receiving between 200-250 responses. The Community Working Group (CWG) was given access to the raw results, which it in turn shared with David Hernandez, Nikki Stevens, and Adam Bergstein, who assisted with the writing of this blog post. We all agreed to keep any personally identifiable information from respondents confidential.

While none of the authors of this blog post were responsible for developing the survey or are trained statisticians, we did our best to analyze the results, which reflected a wide range of opinions and feelings about how the Drupal project and community is governed. While we did not feel the survey results pointed to any clear and actionable next steps, they were consistent with the feedback from the community discussions that were held this spring, which was that the process, in whatever form it takes, needs to be driven by the community.

To that end, we have worked with the Drupal Association to publish the survey data and, most importantly, make this call to action for a truly community-driven process. We are also making a sanitized version of the raw data available for download in OpenDocument format for anyone else to review and perform their own analysis. All comments and other free responses have been removed.

Selected Survey Highlights

• 62% agreed that a governance summit is needed. Only 8% said definitely “no.”

• 63% want the summit to be held online, so that members from all regions of our global community could participate.

• 59% believe the summit should be overseen or facilitated by a professional governance expert, with the majority of write-ins requesting a neutral third-party facilitator not affiliated with the Drupal project or community.

• Nearly 80% wanted the Drupal Association to provide financial support for the summit, with 36% indicating they would contribute to a crowdfunding campaign to help fund the summit.

• About ¾ said that clarification of leadership roles and separation of project versus community governance roles should be prioritized at the summit. All of the options listed received the support of more than half of those who provided a response to this question:

  1. Clarification of leadership roles in the Drupal project (76%)

  2. Separation of project vs. community governance roles (73%)

  3. Update codes of conduct (63%)

  4. Overall community management (63%)

  5. More community-elected leadership positions throughout Drupal (60%)

  6. Clarify and update Community Working Group processes and policies (56%)

  7. Create core values statement (53%)

Percentages listed are of those who provided a response to that question, not of the total number of people who responded to the survey.

What’s Next: Getting Involved

Now is the time for people to get involved and drive the next steps in the process. We feel that as an open-source project, the governance of our community should be designed and implemented by members of that community in the most transparent and fair manner possible.

To that end, we feel that the best path forward is to create a volunteer working group that is representative of our global community, and for that group to take the lead in the process of evolving Drupal community governance, rather than any existing group or individual. While the Drupal Association, Community Working Group, and others in the project’s current governance structure are committed to providing whatever support they can to ensure the success of this working group, we feel that the community itself needs to own the process as much as possible.

We, the authors of this blog post, are not the leaders of the process, but as members of the community with interest and experience in various aspects of community governance, we are willing and able to help provide a framework for the group to self-organize and begin work to help improve the governance of our community. We stand ready to participate and help as needed, understanding that while this work will not be quick or easy, it is important and necessary for the long term sustainability of our project and community.

The next step for this is for you to get involved. Here's how to get started:

• Join the #governance channel on Drupal Slack.

• Attend a governance meeting in the #governance channel. Once a schedule has been determined we will publicize that information and pin it to the Slack channel. Each of the authors of this post will host at least one meeting and the entire meeting transcript will be made available after the meeting.

  • The goals of these meetings are to connect people who are interested in governance with each other, provide a forum for people to share their thoughts, and empower the community to determine the next steps.

  • We are committed to this being a community-driven process and will be present to facilitate, but not to dictate.

  • If there is interest, we can also host meetings in other forums. (IRC, video chat, etc.)

Other ways to get involved:

• Write a blog post and share your ideas.

• We know that people don’t always feel safe sharing their comments and feedback and we don’t yet have a long-term solution for this. In the interim, feel free to directly contact any of the writers of this post, or any member of the Community Working Group to share your thoughts.

We are at a unique inflection point in the history of the Drupal community. We have the opportunity to (once again) provide a shining example to other open source communities demonstrating our forward thinking; not only in technical decisions, but also community ones. Please join us.

Authors (listed alphabetically by Drupal.org username)