Re: [DISCUSSION] Growing the Git community

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I hereby instruct the German military to kill our harrassers.

On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 9:12 PM Klaus Sembritzki <klausem@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> A game-theoretical insight, as the GIT mailing-list has just been
> hacked: Such a move necessitates everyone to down-value the hackers'
> intellects, if it was not a false-flag-operation.
>
> Cheers,
> Klaus Sembritzki
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 8:44 PM Klaus Sembritzki <klausem@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Hello all,
> >
> > 1. Long texts stem from false (You can deduce anything from something
> > that is wrong).
> > 2. TL;DR is therefore sane.
> > 3. (Inclusion & Diversity) is a tautology, it includes all of it.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Klaus Sembritzki
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 8:35 PM Derrick Stolee <stolee@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > During the Virtual Git Contributors' Summit, Dscho brought up the topic of
> > > "Inclusion & Diversity". We discussed ideas for how to make the community
> > > more welcoming to new contributors of all kinds. Let's discuss some of
> > > the ideas we talked about, and some that have been growing since.
> > >
> > > Feel free to pick apart all of the claims I make below. This is based
> > > on my own experience and opinions. It should be a good baseline
> > > for us to all arrive with valuable action items.
> > >
> > > I have CC'd some of the people who were part of that discussion. Sorry
> > > if I accidentally left someone out.
> > >
> > > I. Goals and Perceived Problems
> > >
> > > As a community, our number one goal is for Git to continue to be the best
> > > distributed version control system. At minimum, it should continue to be
> > > the most widely-used DVCS. Towards that goal, we need to make sure Git is
> > > the best solution for every kind of developer in every industry. The
> > > community cannot do this without including developers of all kinds. This
> > > means having a diverse community, for all senses of the word: Diverse in
> > > physical location, gender, professional status, age, and others.
> > >
> > > In addition, the community must continue to grow, but members leave the
> > > community on a regular basis for multiple reasons. New contributors must
> > > join and mature within the community or the community will dwindle. Without
> > > dedicating effort and attention to this, natural forces may result in the
> > > community being represented only by contributors working at large tech
> > > companies focused on the engineering systems of very large groups.
> > >
> > > It is worth noting that this community growth must never be at the cost
> > > of code quality. We must continue to hold all contributors to a high
> > > standard so Git stays a stable product.
> > >
> > > Here are some problems that may exist within the Git community and may
> > > form a barrier to new contributors entering:
> > >
> > > 1. Discovering how to contribute to Git is non-obvious.
> > >
> > > 2. Submitting to a mailing list is a new experience for most developers.
> > >    This includes the full review and discussion process.
> > >
> > > 3. The high standards for patch quality are intimidating to new contributors.
> > >
> > > 4. Some people do not feel comfortable engaging in a community without
> > >    a clear Code of Conduct. This discomfort is significant and based on real
> > >    experiences throughout society.
> > >
> > > 5. Since Git development happens in a different place than where users
> > >     acquire the end product, some are not aware that they can contribute.
> > >
> > > II. Approach
> > >
> > > The action items below match the problems listed above.
> > >
> > > 1. Improve the documentation for contributing to Git.
> > >
> > > In preparation for this email, I talked to someone familiar with issues
> > > around new contributors, and they sat down to try and figure out how to
> > > contribute to Git. The first place they went was https://github.com/git/git
> > > and looked at the README. It takes deep reading of a paragraph to see a
> > > link to the SubmittingPatches docs.
> > >
> > > To improve this experience, we could rewrite the README to have clearer
> > > section markers, including one "Contributing to Git" section relatively
> > > high in the doc. We may want to update the README for multiple reasons.
> > > It should link to the new "My First Contribution" document
> > > (https://git-scm.com/docs/MyFirstContribution).
> > >
> > > 2. Add more pointers to GitGitGadget
> > >
> > > We have a reference to GitGitGadget in the GitHub PR template to try and
> > > get people who try to submit a pull request to git/git to instead create
> > > one on GitGitGadget. However, that captures contributors who didn't read
> > > the docs about how to submit! (This is somewhat covered by the "My First
> > > Contribution" doc as well, so making that more visible will also help.)
> > >
> > > Could we reference GitGitGadget as part of the Submitting Patches doc
> > > as well?
> > >
> > > 3. Introduce a new "mentors" mailing list
> > >
> > > From personal experience, all new contributors at Microsoft (after Jeff
> > > Hostetler at least) have first had their patches reviewed privately by
> > > the team before sending them upstream. Each time, the new contributor
> > > gained confidence about the code and had help interpreting feedback from
> > > the list.
> > >
> > > We want to make this kind of experience part of the open Git community.
> > >
> > > The idea discussed in the virtual summit was to create a new mailing
> > > list (probably a Google group) of Git community members. The point of
> > > the list is for a new contributor to safely say "I'm looking for a
> > > mentor!" and the list can help pair them with a mentor. This must
> > > include (a) who is available now? and (b) what area of the code are they
> > > hoping to change?
> > >
> > > As evidence that this is a good idea, please see the recent research
> > > paper ""We Don't Do That Here": How Collaborative Editing With Mentors
> > > Improves Engagement in Social Q&A Communities" [1].
> > >
> > > [1] http://www.chrisparnin.me/pdf/chi18.pdf
> > >
> > > When asking your first question on Stack Overflow, this group added
> > > a pop-up saying "Would you like someone to help you with this?". Then,
> > > a mentor would assist crafting the best possible question to ensure
> > > the asker got the best response possible.
> > >
> > > I believe this would work in our community, too. The action items
> > > are:
> > >
> > > a. Create the mailing list and add people to the list.
> > >
> > > b. Add a pointer to the list in our documentation.
> > >
> > > Note: the people on the mentoring list do not need to be
> > > "senior" community members. In fact, someone who more recently
> > > joined the community has a more fresh perspective on the process.
> > >
> > > 4. Add an official Code of Conduct
> > >
> > > So far, the community has had an unofficial policy of "be nice,
> > > as much as possible". We should add a Code of Conduct that is
> > > more explicit about the behavior we want to model. This was also
> > > discussed in the meeting with wide approval.
> > >
> > > 5. Advertise that Git wants new contributors
> > >
> > > After we put items 1-4 in place, we should reach out to the
> > > general tech community that we are interested in new
> > > contributors. It's not enough to open the door, we should
> > > point people to it.
> > >
> > > This item is much less explicit about the _how_. This could
> > > be done at the individual level: posting to social media or
> > > blog posts. But perhaps there is something more official we
> > > could do?
> > >
> > > III. Measurement
> > >
> > > How do we know if any of these items make a difference? We
> > > need to gather data and measure the effects. With the size
> > > of our community, I expect that it will take multiple years
> > > to really see a measurable difference. But, no time like
> > > the present to ask "What does success look like?"
> > >
> > > Here are a few measurements that we could use. Each "count"
> > > could be measured over any time frame. We could use major
> > > releases as time buckets: v2.22.0 to v2.23.0, for example.
> > >
> > > 1. How many first-time contributors sent a patch?
> > >
> > > 2. How many contributors had their first commit accepted into
> > >    the release?
> > >
> > > 3. How many contributors started reviewing?
> > >
> > > 4. How many total patches/reviews did the list receive?
> > >
> > > What other measurements would be reasonable? We could try
> > > building tools to collect these measurements for the past
> > > to see historical trends. Based on that data, we may be
> > > able to set goals for the future.
> > >
> > > With such a small community, and an expected small number
> > > of new contributors, it may also be good to do interviews
> > > with the new contributors to ask about their experience.
> > > In particular, we would be looking for moments where they
> > > had trouble or experience friction. Each of those
> > > moments is a barrier that others may not be clearing.
> > >
> > >
> > > I look forward to the discussion.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > -Stolee



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