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Messenger's Error(s): Chris Wilson's flawed rant about Drupal and whitehouse.gov

10 points| techini10 | 16 years ago |databasepublish.com | reply

5 comments

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[+] filosofo|16 years ago|reply
The Slate article struck me as a tongue-in-cheek dig at the Obama administration. For example:

"Drupal's defenders are eerily reminiscent of those movement Democrats who were constantly knocking at your front door in the summer of 2008."

or

"If Drupal were a piece of legislation, it would be the farm bill"

No one should take comments like that as a serious criticism of Drupal or the Whitehouse's use of Drupal; it's poking fun at Obama supporters. It's a joke.

[+] mthg|16 years ago|reply
I know the author of the piece in question, Chris. He's a writer with no technical background whatsoever, and his job is to write whimsical jocular short pieces for Slate. This isn't a serious critique of any sort. There's nothing to see here.
[+] mechanical_fish|16 years ago|reply
Yeah, because making obscure nerds feel miserable by ignorantly misrepresenting their work in public is always good for a laugh.

I mean, it's not as if this is one of the very few times that my non-nerd relatives have ever seen the word "Drupal" in print, or anything. I'm sure they will all get the joke. And, if not, I'm sure the next few thousand-word popular-press articles on CMSes will clear up any misconceptions that may have arisen.

[+] alxp|16 years ago|reply
Slate has a reputation for knee-jerk contrarianism in its writing, not surprising that they tried to go for the same attention-grabbing schtick when writing about software. Sad but typical. This is a good reply.
[+] 83457|16 years ago|reply
The original article criticizes the administration side of a web platform in political ways and suggests a multi-million dollar custom built proprietary system as an alternative. It must be a joke.