Drupal is deprecating the Contact module with core version 11.4 and so is OpenCulturas. From Drupal version 12.0 onwards, the module is no longer supported. A contributed Contact module will be available as a replacement but OpenCulturas 4.0 will not include it by default.
Reasons for contact forms
- Historically, such forms were utilized as a replacement for publicly accessible email addresses that were often scraped to be collected and sold for large advertisement campaigns or malicious attacks.
- The forms served as a direct comunication channel for those who do not have email configured on their device or those browsing on a public or shared computer
- Asking for additional required information, e. g. to distribute the notification to an appropriate department
- Compliance: A form can ask GDPR consent before sending
Of course there are more reasons, for example tracking and CRM pipelines. But the OpenCulturas form did not support such technologies anyway.
Reasons against contact forms
- Spam mails generated through contact form are time-consuming and hard to defeat. Of course there are anti-spam measures like Captchas, block lists and the like but not all spam is issued by bots. Humans are also attacking your forms, e.g. to place advertisements of some kind. The maintenance burden is manifold.
- AI generated submissions largely add to that burden. Deleting what has passed the anti-spam measures is still time-consuming and carries the risk of deleting actual contacts.
- No difference: Whether mails are sent directly or through a contact form, the carry the same risks into staff’s inboxes.
- Email is no longer the most important means of communication. Especially the younger audience prefers to “slide into your DMs” (use direct messages on social media platforms).
- Compliance: Such forms are rarely set up as a double opt-in solution (neither is the core contact form). It is therefore not ensured whether the receiving address has given consent.
- Is is no longer a typical scenario that your visitors have no device at hand to use their prefered means of contact.
