Improve experts listing

As an initial remark: at the moment the heading is "Find an expert" and then the list shows organizations that paid a certain fee.....I would like to separate the two:

it is vital and important that organizations contribute and I would expect any organization that wants to make money with CiviCRM to contribute
We need to show experts that can help organizations with CiviCRM because "we" know they know what they are talking about.

Initial idea that came up at the sprint: For the expert list we could say that an organization could be on the expert list when:

recommended by a known customer
recommended by a known partner
in case of neither of the above the applicant gets assigned a partner as a mentor. This mentor then decides in 3 months time if they are willing to recommend.

@ErikHommel I like the bullets above. I might add that there should be an application process of some kind. Maybe that would fall under number 3 somehow. In any case, I'd encourage you to cross-post your feedback here community/sustainability#6 (closed) This is actually a better place for your points. I think this issue is more specifically about improving the listing.

I have antitrust concerns about the idea of vetting partners--someone could easily assert that it's anti-competitive behavior. I commented more at community/sustainability#6 (comment 24847)

I agree it's vague what qualifies an 'expert', something like Eric's proposal above or Josh's suggested wording for the new partner page sounds like a step forward.

Separately, the listing detail page itself feels like it has scope for growth. Some data that aren't listed but could be:

extensions maintained/contributed to
events attended/attending
talks given (link to videos / slideshows / etc)
sponsorship & MiH donor history
work availability (Green: Open; Amber: Depends/limited; Red: None)
regular collaborators (links to other contributors/partners)
github profile link (and twitter/MM/SE/etc)

Maybe others are like me, in that they would be happy to be listed in a community directory and have a profile page, but aren't looking to advertise themselves for work at /experts.

These are cool suggestions @nicol I like the idea of work availability. That seems like a really creative way to be listed without necessarily seeming like you're advertising. I wonder how much users looking for a partner would care though.

True, I imagine some of that may be more used by the community understand each other / connect / form new collaborations.

I think the availability option is actually pretty helpful for potential customers. In some ways, the partner listing is kind of like the in-network doctor listing that US insurance companies have. I think we offer more information than that (this wasn't a favorable comparison--both are overwhelming lists with minimal detail besides location), but one thing they have that we lack is a flag for "accepting new patients".

I didn't see this comment until I wrote one over at community/sustainability#6 (comment 24847), but I really like this idea of adding more detail. I was thinking there could be some kind of badge or summary statistics to include the numbers on

commits on Github,
commits to the docs
points on StackExchange
employees who work on CiviCRM
years in business
years as partner

plus the ones that @nicol listed.

Whether partner responds to RFP's or not.

added 15m of time spent at 2019-10-15

@mattwire commented on Mattermost, prompting @josh to create this issue:

Also worth noting that none of the existing "Hosting providers" are "pure hosts" - in fact clicking through to their websites it looks like some of them don't even offer hosting!

I'd assert that just as it's inadvisable to support CiviCRM without offering at least some guidance on hosting, it's inadvisable to host CiviCRM without offering at least some guidance on configuration and use.

Parallel to what Matt said, I suspect that none of the existing "Service providers" are "pure implementers" - each of us are able to offer hosting--either resold or referred and managed--and some will insist that their clients use that hosting. The reason 39 of us have checked the "hosting" box is that we actually offer hosting but were forced to choose only one listing category.

I don't think it's helpful to imply that you should get your hosting and implementation at different places, yet that's exactly what many prospective customers come to us assuming.

I'm still pretty neutral on this. We definitely heard from "pure" hosts that they were feeling crowded out. I'd also say that as it's set up right now, as an "implementor" (or a host), your listing appears on 2 out of 3 lists. By consolidating, you'd only appear on 1 list. That may be a positive, I don't know (and I do tend to prefer simplicity).

I went ahead and pulled the analytics. Not sure what exactly they mean, however for the past year, page rankings are: 1) all providers ranks in 7th position 2) hosting providers in 15th and 3) service providers (just the provider listing, not hosts) comes in at position 68 (1416 page views or .15%).

do these metrics validate that really only one list is needed?
is it surprising that "hosting providers" attracts as many views as it does (and why does it)?

I'm not surprised that there are so many visitors, since most people understand that CiviCRM needs to be hosted somewhere, and many are aware that it requires more care than your typical Drupal/Joomla/WordPress site. If you're excited about using CiviCRM, your next thought is going to be "who can host it for me", not "who's an 'expert at implementation and customization'". The latter seems very optional, while the first is a requirement.

I suspect that this either/or listing is why so many implementers list themselves under the hosting side: they understand there's more traffic over there. I've certainly considered it, since we're no different in our model than many of the shops over there. Am I right in thinking that the only "pure" hosts on that list are CiviHosting and Electric Embers? Everyone else does system design, configuration, customization, etc. on top of hosting--just as many of the rest of us do hosting on top of those other things.

Am I right in thinking that the only "pure" hosts on that list are CiviHosting and Electric Embers?

I think CiviDesk hosts Drupal7, WordPress and Joomla.
Symbiotic hosts Drupal7, Drupal8, WordPress and Joomla (but only for package C, i.e. more expensive VPS)

I don't think we should view "hosting" as "non-SaaS". We should just expose a CMS option to make it easier to decide:

Does this host support my CMS
Does it include regular upgrades (SaaS-like)
Something about price ranges? Although maybe that should be left to the description by the partner.

I often hear of frustration from people who cannot find clear pricing information from partners, meaning that they need to talk to a sales person, and that's intimidating to many people (and a waste of time if they have to contact 4-5 partners).

Am I right in thinking that the only "pure" hosts on that list are CiviHosting and Electric Embers?

I think CiviDesk hosts Drupal7, WordPress and Joomla.

Symbiotic hosts Drupal7, Drupal8, WordPress and Joomla (but only for package C, i.e. more expensive VPS)

Right, but that hosting is on top of the full variety of services that you offer. In other words, someone going to Electric Embers or CiviHosting is going to DIY their implementation, customizations, etc. or hire someone else. In contrast, Symbiotic and CiviDesk will evaluate your needs, design the configuration, and build custom features--and host your site with upgrades. That makes them no different than many of the companies on the "service providers" listing.

I'm not saying that nobody on the hosts page does hosting--quite the opposite: lots of people do hosting, but the listing gives the impression that service providers don't do hosting and vice-versa.

Instead of having this false dichotomy, there should just be faceted listings: check filters to see who does hosting, who supports Drupal 8, who is in Canada, who can provide support in Spanish, who can do custom development, etc.

I agree with what you are saying, just to clarify on Symbiotic:

For many organisations we just create them an instance and charge a monthly fee. Sometimes after a 1-3-6 months, they come back and ask for help with training, imports, custom dev, but not always.

We also do white-label hosting for other providers.

But I understand what you mean by DIY hosting (which we are not), and I agree the focus should be on criteria such as: hosting, provides upgrades, CMS, country, language, etc.

added 15m of time spent at 2019-10-22

copying @HeatherOliver on this as she's volunteered to maybe help rebuild this view in the D8 site.

Discussing in MM, I was pointed towards this issue by Josh during this discussion:

https://chat.civicrm.org/civicrm/pl/3ygb83dyipn97cjyzdxag89e4y

I believe that having some kind of "Sector" flags would be useful in knowing who to engage. While US laws are designed such that any business entity should engage any client, it is not always in the best interest for either party to have a business relationship. As a hosting entity, you have access to some very privy details. Yeah, agreements and legality, yada yada. In the end, this has to be a trusted relationship. Same goes for integration partners. Business laws are built around financial relationships. CiviCRM instances are about an idealogy, not creating wealth, and thus the ramifications of breach do not follow the same trajectory as the overall business sector.

The difficulty can come in keeping things professional and not creating a rift in the community because these differences are made so public. However, simply knowing that a shop is geared towards a particular sector can also mean that there is expertise in the nuances of certain sector.

Absolutely--we've had Republicans want to work with us before, and I've been frank that as much as we wouldn't be excited about helping them, they wouldn't be eager for us to be all up in their data. They've been thankful for my honesty and would go find someone else to work with.

I think it would be a challenge to offer filters for this. For example, we work with religious organizations, but not with those that deny leadership roles based on gender or sexual orientation.

In general, I do think this community keeps it professional, and we all know that what we build can be used for all kinds of people. A lot of the work to make CiviMail scale was built by a shop in Virginia that built websites and CRMs for right-wing political candidates, for example. It was no secret what sort of work they did or why they'd want to email tons of people, and most of us in the community weren't cool with their mission, but we could stick to the tech and ensure that the improvements they built reached the larger community.

mentioned in issue marketing/events/community-summit-2019#6 (moved)

I see agreement above that the current division between shops providing hosting and others is false and should be done away with. I agree too.

I sympathize with the people looking for pricing information on simple hosting that they could compare between providers. Some providers bundle this with unlimited help desk support, some with required upgrades to CMS and CRM, some price upgrades separately but require them at least for security releases, some have their own schedule for required upgrades, some price upgrades separately, etc. So I think it may not be feasible to force partners either to put up prices lists or to make them comparable.

I would prefer to have the various metrics about community contributions boiled down eg to 3 levels / badges. People just wanting a CRM or hosting may not even know what a commit is, or what is core or an extension.

Regarding @gharris 's point about letting potential clients know what one's politics are on the whole spectrum of issues, or perhaps just indicating that you specialize in one side of one issue area: that's a hard one. My sense is that there is often due diligence on both sides when things are sensitive. I could list which areas I feel strongly about, which potential clients I have refused, which ones I was up front about my differences and took on because they didn't see it as a problem or didn't because it was a problem, which one I left because of my changing views, etc. We all have different sorts of filters, and I'm not sure it would be easy to put them in a standard grid. Sometimes I know some of us balance the benefit to the CiviCRM community from some work against the distaste or mere lack of excitement we feel for the mission of potential client. So, I'm not sure that trying to incorporate this sort of filtering into a grid is needed. When folks care about it they can put their values up front in text: 'We work with small progressive non-profits', or it can be signaled by the clients listed on one's website.

added Content label

changed milestone to %CiviCRM Website Upgrade

Referencing this feedback from @cmtool

added 15m of time spent at 2019-11-28

mentioned in issue community/community-engagement#19 (closed)

I am agreement with @andrewhunt and would like to have these radio buttons (binary options) changed to checkboxes to allow service providers to indicate if they provide one or more of these services. A service provider should be able to be listed in all three of these listings if they provide those services:

What needs to be done to make this change happen and resolve this issue?

Can't we just provide better filtering instead of having multiple lists? Citing the comment above from @nicol re: some nice ideas to improve the listing. Also want to cite feedback from an end user re: metrics that they valued in their search for a partner.

I at least was hoping for exactly that: a single list with better filtering.

Any change would be an improvement on the current situation, happy with filtering or any other option that removes the "single list" approach currently in place.

What's the next step to make this happen @josh - it's just editing a view?

Ok, I'm certainly open for it. However, I have one question... how do make is such that the filtering is actually legit? What I mean is that in order for the filtering to work, the results need to be accurate. However, many orgs on the listing select all options in order to show up more often.

For example, n a recent request for a joomla client looking for a partner, we emailed the nine or ten that indicated they worked on joomla. Of these, I think only one responded with "we don't do new projects in joomla... if they're already on joomla, we'll support them, but we'll try to push them to wordpress". The others basically indicated "we don't do joomla", yet they'd selected it.

How do we prevent this? I have ideas, but I'd be curious how you'd tackle this in order to make the filtering truly valuable.

added 15m of time spent at 2020-01-13

We're not starting from a position of having an accurate listing at the moment so we'll be no worse off moving to a single listing. I'd say we just start by reaching out to partners and asking them to update their listings honestly.

added 30m of time spent at 2020-01-15

Ok, we've been discussing for 3 months now and the general consensus seems to be "yes" with some questions. So I've just gone ahead and done it - there is now one listing:

I disabled the hosting-providers / service-providers views, added redirects for their URLs to experts and disabled the menu items for those two and tweaked the description at the top of the visible views. So if we need to switch back it would be easy.

@josh I'd suggest you take a look at some of the partners and see if you think each one is accurate - and perhaps do some comms getting them to update. Eg. on the hosting front, if you don't do hosting yourself but host via another provider you probably shouldn't advertise hosting. etc.

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. I do agree that consensus is forming, however I'm not sure we're there yet. The change to me seems mostly cosmetic (based on preference) and doesn't really "fix" anything (it's not like "oh, it's working better now!"). But, what's done is done and not really worth changing back I suppose.

Likewise, it raises the same questions regarding the ability of the list to reflect the right pertners to the right viewers at the right time. I do not see how the list is any more effective in that regard, and I believe that's actually the heart of the issue.

I do not believe that me taking a look at partners and assessing the accuracy of their details is realistic. Citing the Joomla example above, I will bet that most of the responses will be "well, we doooo support a few joomla clients, but we really prefer wordpress." So, how do we reflect that? The same applies to custom code... "well, we have done some custom coding, but never anything serious"... or back to the original hosting question... "we doooo host some clients, however hosting really isn't our main line of business...

I'm not trying to sound petty here, I'm merely pointing out that this is the fundamental issue with the list. How do we equitably share information and ensure that users find the most suitable contributor/partner with which to work?

Some filters are far easier than others, and I'd suggest that we take a hard look at going back to the basics:

language
geography
CMS (create a level of support selector, include "no CMS" as an option)
Services (if we choose to maintain these, I believe they should be qualified somehow)

According to the Analytics above - there were over 5000 visits a year on the hostings page - it was the 15th most popular on the site and these people now aren't being helped. That's a usability regression IMHO. That page came second when googling 'CiviCRM hosting' - which is a good page rank, that now will be lost - so a marketing regression too.

Also, it could be changed so that providers appear on both pages, so no need to take that page down I can see - just needs replacing/appending the custom field radio buttons with check boxes, and then updating the contact records.

More to the point - and please don't take this as a criticism @mattwire but a Point of Process - is it the case now @josh that anyone with requisite permissions can make changes to the site at will? I know I've had that priviliage the last two years - and am happy to transition that to Matt or anyone else - but there was a sort of process around how that came to be for me, the kind of changes I make autonomously (typos/broken css mostly) and how I document/permission bigger changes - including being on Marketing calls when they (rarely) happen.

If we were to apply FLOSS principles to site governance - Matt should have been able to make a kind of PR (at least an issue tagged 'proposal') to change the site as he suggested - so it could be discussed - and then any Maintainer could merge/approve/reject that into the site.

mentioned in issue #172 (closed)

mentioned in issue community/sustainability#19 (closed)

mentioned in issue community/sustainability#6 (closed)

Given the evolution of this request and the related requests.

Honestly, I think it would be a more true representation to make the following changes to the "Experts Listing":

Change the title of "Experts" listing to "Financial Supporters" or "Project Sponsors"
Include a description at the top of the page: "The following organisations contribute financially to pay for the maintenance and infrastructure for the CiviCRM open source project. Consider supporting these organisations by using their services as shown below."
Sort the listing in descending order, by the financial amount contributed in the last X months.

Remove any references to "Experts" because you can financially contribute to the CiviCRM project without being an expert.

WikiMedia, Greens and other organisations that have contributed a significant amount of resources into supporting CiviCRM should also get a prominent mention.

You may want to consider launching an "Experts Listing" in future, but it should really be based on some measurable merit achieved by each organisation listed and not simply by how much money they give to CiviCRM LLC.

Feel free to throw stones if you disagree with my summation - I can take it :)

@justinfreeman Your suggestion is good on paper, but will most probably break when trying to define, and then implement a "measurable merit achieved by each organisation". What we had was definitely not perfect, but certainly "good enough" as it balanced financial and time contributions in ranking partners. It seems you are advocating a separation of these two aspects, which could also have negative consequences.

I would personally prefer staying with an aggregate, but separating the contributor lists by nature: experts, technology partners, and other organizations.

@cividesk thanks for the comment. I note that CiviDesk is no longer listed on the Experts listing at all. Pretty sure you were before, why is that @cividesk?

@justinfreeman There was an issue with sumfields (infra/ops#933 (closed)) which messed up things badly. I'll look into CiviDesk as contributors, but they lost their partner badge because they are not partners anymore. (but I'm rotating priorities, already spent a lot of time on this, and just re-iterating my point that this technical debt is expensive to maintain)

@justinfreeman took a temporary break to express a strong disagreement, but will rejoin soon. You won't get rid of us that easily!

@cividesk that made me laugh, good one!

It will be good to have you back, @cividesk , along with your reasoned disagreements.

@JoeMurray Thanks for these kind words.

changed the description

This discussion seems to now be happening in two places - there's some other comments on this subject and in response here: community/sustainability#19 (comment 30867).

@nicol thanks for the link, that's the fourth discussion thread now related to this topic.

To be honest, I find these type of discussions in Gitlab to be disjointed, frustrating, very time-consuming and I am concerned that there's no actual outcome achieved.

We tend to have a few people with strong opinions, making it difficult to achieve consensus. I know I'm sometimes part of those people (I'm not pointing the finger). I think Josh realized we should split the discussion about recognizing/valuing support, which I think is a good idea. Spaghetti discussion. :)

@bgm very Spaghetti and with a few Meatballs thrown in for good measure.

seems a use-case for Loomio - a clear proposal is made and people say yes, no, or declare indifference - with a deadline for voting..

@nicol I'd be in favour of trying anything new. The inability to make clear decisions and act on them are two blockers to any organisation moving forwards.

This is why having formal meetings in person or on-line are good. They are time-boxed, outcomes are recorded, actions assigned and followed up.

TL:DR: 1) Change the "Experts" Listing to "Services" or "Marketplace" Listing for CiviCRM service providers with a ~~project~~ non-financial credit-based ordering (non-financial to CiviCRM LLC). 2) Provide a new listing "Partners" or "Supporters" Listing for financial contributors with financial contributions based ordering.

Now for many words...

The current title of this list is "All CiviCRM Experts" and there are calls to action which direct people to this list: "WORK WITH A TRUSTED EXPERT TO SETUP YOUR CIVICRM"

I think given that this list is being proclaimed as the definitive listing of all CiviCRM experts then at the very least it is expected by the general public viewing this list that:

a) Those organisations and individuals on the list are actual experts in the field. Because that's what "expert" means, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/expert

b) That there has been some process performed to validate the expertise. Because each expert is listed on civicrm.org - it is reasonable to expect that the CiviCRM organisation has done this validation

c) That this list is a trusted point of reference. Because civicrm.org explicitly says: "WORK WITH A TRUSTED EXPERT TO SETUP YOUR CIVICRM"

There used to be a requirement to submit two Case Studies per year to qualify as a CiviCRM partner. I thought that was a good policy and a very basic requirement. I don't think I have ever been asked to re-qualify as a Partner or submit a Case Study as a Partner ever.

I do think that CiviCRM LLC is taking a pretty big risk in providing the Expert Listing without doing any validation of those "experts" listed. What happens if a customer decides to take legal action again CiviCRM because they endorsed an "expert" who then subsequently caused issues with that customer to the point where legal action ensued?

So to my mind, the CiviCRM Expert Listing is currently misleading the public. It is a listing of Financial Supporters (Partners) without any validation of expertise - which is why I recommended it be changed.

If you look at the Drupal Association as a point of reference: https://www.drupal.org/association/programs - Financial supporters for Drupal with 3 categories: Drupal Supporting, Hosting, Technology Partner

https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/docs/marketplace/services-listing - Organisations selling Drupal-related services. "Drupal Services is a listing of companies which provide Drupal-related services and have contributed back to the Drupal community. It is ordered by issue credits granted by project maintainers, supporting partner status, and then by organization title" See https://www.drupal.org/drupal-services

I think the way that the Drupal Association has resolved this issue is pretty good and clear. There is no explicit endorsement by the Drupal Association, "1102 organizations provide Drupal services and have requested to be listed here." and there is additional information provided for each service provider to allow the general public to make an informed decision, ie. case studies, issue credits, members.

@justinfreeman i realize there are a few issues open about this topic, however they originated at different times and have some different focus, though they do all touch on the common objective of properly identifying and recognizing those organizations and individuals that support CiviCRM consistent with their preferences as well as with the objective of growing the ecosystem of supporters and of users. It's complex, hence the lengthy discussion.

@nicol this is one of those areas where the core team will gather feedback and make an assessment on the best path forward. About 1/3 of our budget comes from partners, so putting it out to a general vote, while democratic for the project, may not produce the best result for the ongoing operation of the CT.

back to @justinfreeman we did have, at one point, a requirement to have 2 or 3 cases studies per year. We got some push back from it and, because our budget was in decline, loosened up the requirement in order to preserve dues. That also is changing soon.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. These issues will be resolved soon and we will revise the listing. All of this feedback as well as past partner surveys helps us assess what is best.

@josh thanks for taking the time to review and comment, appreciated!

@justinfreeman Thanks for pointing out the risk with 'expert', very relevant and right on cue.

That also is changing soon. @josh Thanks.

I think some of this is a question for a lawyer, since I think @justinfreeman and I are weighing competing legal risks:

Under the current system, could an unhappy customer of a partner claim the partner has no expertise and say CiviCRM is liable since it listed the partner as an "expert"?
Under a system where there's vetting of "experts", could a partner who's rejected as an "expert" go after CiviCRM for an antitrust violation, claiming it imposes an arbitrary review process to limit competition?

I personally suspect the latter is much more likely, at least in the U.S., but a lawyer would help figure this out. They also might have good examples of policies that ensure quality but aren't anti-competitive.

Valid concerns, but:

We could put a disclaimer/definition of what is an 'expert', i.e. that we are not responsible, and how to report problems.
Antitrust would involve an abuse of a dominant position or collusion. edit: look at Apple app-store reviews for examples of borderline monopoly abuse, and yet they get away with it easily. Besides, we do not have a monopoly on CiviCRM experts listings.

It's an interesting discussion, but I think we are over-complicating things.

Just wanted to point out again how Drupal.org handles this point, see https://www.drupal.org/drupal-services - there is no explicit endorsement

I think the way that the Drupal Association has resolved this issue is pretty good and clear. There is no explicit endorsement by the Drupal Association, "1102 organizations provide Drupal services and have requested to be listed here." and there is additional information provided for each service provider to allow the general public to make an informed decision, ie. case studies, issue credits, members.

Thanks everyone for the feedback here. I think we have sufficient input here, with this issue and the most recent partner survey. Closing this out. We'll have an update to the listing soon and will communicate it in advance. Until then, please bear with us as the current list continues to do some funky stuff with sorting and badges.

closed

mentioned in issue community/sustainability#18 (closed)

mentioned in issue #215 (moved)

Improve experts listing

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