Promoting new members

[Matthew East]

Hi Dougie,

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 1:02 AM, Dougie Richardson
<dougierichardson at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Every week in this list there are two mails I can count on receiving -
> people requesting to join and people who requested expiring.
>
> There are, really, only a handful of people committing documentation
> to the ubuntu-doc package. It has been suggested that our tool chain
> is too complicated. I have suggested ideas to improve this on a number
> of occasions - they might be crap, because no-one likes them but at
> least they're ideas!
>
> There is undoubtedly a problem in keeping volunteers

I think this is probably true, but you have to remember that people
frequently express an interest in projects without in fact making
concrete contributions or following that up. We have no way of forcing
people to contribute, except by seeking to make it as easy as it can
possibly be to contribute without compromising the quality control
that we need to have in place. It's a fact of our project that people
will express an initial interest without taking it further. We're not
the only Ubuntu team where that happens regularly.

The discussions recently about improving (and clarifying) our
processes are part of helping newcomers to the team to see how we work
in a transparent way, and hopefully show people that it is easy and
rewarding to contribute. There is a reason behind those sorts of
discussions, they are positive discussions, and they will lead to
improvements.

I don't think it's true at all to say that people are requesting to
join the team each week. While it may be true that people join the
ubuntu-doc-students team on a relatively regular basis, it is not
often that someone sends a few patches and can be considered to join
the ubuntu-core-doc team. Nathan and Connor have recently started the
process, and as far as I'm concerned they are contributing good
patches, but in the past 6 months I personally haven't seen that many
regular contributors of patches. Your email is entitled "Promoting new
members": did you have anyone in particular in mind? If so, perhaps
this is a good time to test drive the application process!

I'd definitely like to hear from anyone reading who has joined the
ubuntu-doc-students team and has thought about contributing, but in
the end has not done so. What were the reasons for not getting
involved?

> I for one am not happy working in this team at the moment

I'm sorry to hear that, and I would like to do what I can to help, but
it's difficult for me to understand the reasons you are unhappy. Could
you explain them in more detail?

If it's because you are seeing a lot of discussion about process on
the mailing list at the moment? I personally think that those
discussions are very positive, and will lead to improvements for new
and existing contributors to the team. It's also a very appropriate
time in the release cycle to be having those discussions.

If it's because there are few people committing to the branches at the
moment, well we're working on improving that. Other suggestions that
you have for attracting contributors are definitely very welcome.

> I also notice there are a
> number of prevalent, long term committers from previous cycles who
> haven't been heard from in a while and our solution? To propose their
> removal rather than contact them and find out if there is an issue.

I think it's worth contacting people in the team who haven't been
heard from for a while to ask why they haven't contributed and whether
they would be interested in getting involved again. Would you
volunteer to do so?

But please remember that in open source volunteer projects, a certain
amount of coming and going is a natural part of the project's life.
People's lives become busier, they adopt other hobbies, start using
different operating systems, etc etc.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF