Promoting new members

[Jim Campbell]

Hi All,

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Emma Jane <emmajane at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday 21 April 2009 5:33:39 am Matthew East wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 9:44 AM, Dougie Richardson
> > <dougierichardson at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > I agree, it isn't. The idea is to improve the way that it is
> > documented. Currently it's confusing as to how to become a member of
> > ~ubuntu-core-doc and the wiki admin group, and improving our internal
> > documentation will resolve that. To the extent that that fact is
>
> Actually what's really confusing is why you would want to become a member
> of
> that team.


Is this a really hardcore swipe at the documentation team as a whole? If so,
I don't think this kind of comment is particularly helpful.

>
>
>
> > > You know I'm talking about people joining students and not applying to
> > > join the commit team? There can't be people to test your new process
> > > if we don't have new students joining.
> >
> > Ok, so to refine your complaint, it is that people are joining the
> > students team, and then not taking things further by contributing. I
> > agree that this is a concern. But I don't think it is particularly
> > surprising in this community - it's incredibly common for people to
> > show some level of interest by joining a team, and then not taking it
> > further.
>
> It's common to see what you want to see as the problem, Matthew. What you
> are
> seeing is that "everyone else is doing it" and so you are no longer worried
> about the documentation team. Repeatedly people are "sent" to documentation
> when they very very new to Ubuntu as a way of getting their feet wet in
> contributions.
>
> I could paste you the number of times that I've suggested something I'd
> like
> to work on and been told why it's a bad idea. So I just go back to playing
> on
> the Wiki and making screen casts on for other teams. If you, Matthew, can't
> figure out how to engage a published author with multiple years of DocBook
> and
> technical writing experience, you're doing it wrong.


I think we've agreed that we need to make improvements on how we engage new
contributors. And didn't we set up a rather expansive set of Open-Week
sessions? There is work to be done. We know that.


> And if you can't figure
> out how to help a newbie learn how to edit a Wiki page (something we do a
> LOT
> of in the Drupal team at sprints, in IRC and via the mailing list), you're
> also doing it wrong.


I'm not sure where this is coming from. Is it Matthew that is doing it
wrong, or is it that we just need to do more outreach to show people how to
edit the wiki?


>
> > This is a bit of a generalisation. There have been a lot of ideas on
> > this list recently, and quite a few of them are getting discussed in a
> > positive way and will lead to changes (see for example the lack of
> > documentation for commit access, raised recently by Emma and Nathan,
>
> Neither of whom are members of "the team."
>

>
> > and now getting addressed). Another recent example is the use of apt
> > links, now used in the system documentation and being implemented on
> > the wiki.
>
> Actually, what that discussion is showing me is that the core team assigns
> "commit" access on a feeling/flexibility/etc, and that being a member of
> that
> team is to be held in very high regard. To be honest I'm a bit surprised
> that
> no one is embarrassed by this. From the outside it shows a group of people
> who
> are inwardly focused, disinterested in working with new people and who will
> only grant permission to be a member of the elite to their buddies.
>

What other team just grants commit-access to the team repository without
first demonstrating some effort and skill? Honestly, I don't have a lot of
experience on teams outside of Xubuntu (which has gotten a bit more formal
in terms of recognizing contributors), but I would say that the doc-team's
barrier to being a core-doc member is relatively low in comparison to MOTU
requirements.

Because you have mentioned Drupal docs a few times, I checked out how people
become the equivalent of a core-doc member for Drupal. Here's a link:
http://drupal.org/contribute/documentation/join  There's no "enthusiast" or
"contributor" level, just by contributing to the wiki a person is considered
part of the team. To be a "core-doc" member, the person essentially files a
bug report requesting additional rights, stating why they should be granted
the rights. The admins review it, and let the person know either way.

I'm sure that if we had regularly scheduled "team member" review portions
added to our agenda, that contributors such as Connor, Nathan, and yourself
could be added as core-doc members with approval. Yes, I did say "with
approval," but it's obvious that you've each made good contributions thus
far. We are ironing this process out.

(As a side note for later, it looks like Drupal docs does some neat things
with Sprints and particular activities that we could take a look at
incorporating into our processes.)

Forgive me, but I'm going to cut this off here. Overall, I just think that
the team is suffering from a lack of internal communication and development
over a period of time. Like I've noted before, I don't even think we had a
team meeting during the Jaunty release. From the activity on the ML lately,
though, it's clear that people want to write good docs, and that we are
willing to adapt.

Jim
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