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I'm a system builder (former developer) and find that DA is targeting 2 very distinct audiences: developers and system builders. These folks attack problems from two completely different perspectives. I find tags to be great for searching but poor for setting context. Any suggestion on how to better distinguish the context?

Some examples:Builders want to install a module to solve a problem, Developers can just build one. Developers often prefer edditing template files, Builders use DS/Panels, fields or perhaps css. Developers create or apply patches, Builders prefer a stable release.

This issue is not unique to DA, it is rampant on drupal.org too, but wonder if there is a suggested approach here.

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  • Hi @kiamalaluno this is not a feature request. it is a discussion. I don't know what the feature is but assure you there is a problem.
    – Sonicthoughts
    Commented Jun 29, 2015 at 14:18

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From my point of view, this distinction is bad in itself.

Builders want to install a module to solve a problem

But if there isn't any, why should we limit answer to "cannot do", when thing is perfectly doable with some coding?

Developers can just build one

But really, why should they? It would be better use of their time to join efforts with developers of module that already is doing the same thing, thus creating one, better supported module. and even if they want to code it themselves anyway, existing contrib opensource module is perfect resource, comprehensive example how to code such thing.

For the intended audience issue:

This site is not a forum. It's meant as knowledge base, and intended audience are future readers. Most of them probably unregistered first-timers who just found it using Google or something, because they had Drupal related question. You can never know if they are coders or not.

Only if question is asked in a way that makes it clear that only one side is an option you can reasonably expect people googling for another one not to find it. Google and other search engines will not obey tags here, so for most of the audience (or at least large portion of it) tags are useless; any similar mechanism will be.

Only things that will be useful for future readers are:

  • Questions with as many different correct answers as feasible
  • Questions that are so clearly about code that "system builder" will not find them by accident, and vice versa
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Tags cannot be used to say I am a site builder, I am a developer, or I am a Drupal newbie: That is information about the user who asked the question, while tags give information about the question itself.
says the question is about looking for modules, but that doesn't mean the question is asked from site builders or developers. It could be a developer is looking for a module providing an API useful for code they are developing. Other tags like , clearly makes evident the question is about code, but nothing is said about the user who is asking the question.

The only thing that matters is if the question is about code, or about looking for a module to achieve something. That is something that cannot be make evident with tags, but the question itself.

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  • The point is that when asking a question a user can certainly tag "Site Builder" - a developer may use that tag as it is about site building. likewise for coding might be a Development tag. the problem is enforcing or encouraging this. people often do not think in these terms. "The only thing that matters is if the question is about code,...." THAT IS THE PROBLEM, what IMO "Matters" is the audience it is intended for and the problem is how to reflect that in one forum.
    – Sonicthoughts
    Commented Jun 29, 2015 at 14:16
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    @Sonicthoughts first thing first, this site is not a forum. It's meant to be a knowledge base, and all content is supposed to be usable for future readers, too. And unknown future readers are main audience. You know they will find your question because they have similar problem. You can't know if they will be more coders or more module-by-module-assemblers.
    – Mołot
    Commented Jun 29, 2015 at 18:19
  • @Sonicthoughts site-builder would be surely take to mean "I am a site builder" while development is too vague. Keep in mind that tags cannot grab all the aspects of a question, and that they gets pretty useless when the same tag applies to 99% of questions. There are things that can be understood just reading the question.
    – avpaderno Mod
    Commented Jun 29, 2015 at 21:19

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