Finding the Balance between “Contribute Now” and “Register First”

People don’t like to sign up for things. Signing up is mentally equated with receiving spam marketing emails. For example, at a blood drive event near me last year, only a handful of people signed up ahead of time, but almost six times more people showed up.

Web designers face a similar dilemma. It’s important that users sign up for websites where users contribute content, both to reduce spam and to track and identify users’ contributions. But often users don’t want to sign up, even though they want to contribute – and the barrier of signing up will keep some people from contributing. I’ve experienced this personally; especially when dealing with something contentious, people often don’t feel comfortable giving an unknown website their identity in this age of limited privacy.

When I first discovered Drupal, I wasn't looking for a Content Management System. I didn't even know what that was. I was looking for a way to build a website where anyone could register and create posts. I knew what HTML was and I had done a little programming in Visual Basic but that was about the extent of my knowledge.

I have been eagerly following @drupal7release on Twitter, which tweets a daily estimate of when there will be zero critical issues left in the Drupal issue queue. However, this is a linear estimate, and it's based on the assumption that issues will continue to be solved at the same rate. But as the easy issues get solved, the remaining ones are difficult and take longer, so a linear estimate isn't adequate. This is made evident by the fact that the release date keeps creeping forward (it's moved forward almost a full month in the two months the system has been in operation).

Two days ago I wrote a blog post on my Mediacurrent blog about some of the features that typical social networks have that Drupal needs to work on. It appeared on Drupal Planet. Head over there to get the full scoop.