For anyone who doesn't know, I looked into how Debian organizes their development community:
1. They have documents clearly outlining their goals and standards. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines http://www.debian.org/social_contract 2. They generally communicate through mailing lists: http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/ low volume: debian-devel-announce, debian-news high volume: debian-devel, debian-project, debian-mentors, etc. This is probably more developer friendly than my wiki suggestion. I still think we should have some sort of web-interfaced list of developers, contact info, and stuff they're currently working on, but yeah, mailing lists are much nicer for communicaiton. There is a cool website for new joiners: http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint And their developer's reference is a bit more complete than our RPM-how-to: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/developers-reference/ 3. They have a clear list of what packaging needs to be done: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ 4. They have guides for writing documentation, website maintenance, translation, publicity, and quality assurance. These are all things that are underrated. Especially documentation and quality assurance. We should make sure that anyone who wants to help with these types of things feels invited and gets full credit where due. http://www.debian.org/devel/website/ http://qa.debian.org/ While debian still sucks in many ways (hehe), I think we could learn a lot from their community model, and get more done in less time, and attract a lot more help. Austin -- Austin Acton Hon.B.Sc. Synthetic Organic Chemist, Teaching Assistant Department of Chemistry, York University, Toronto MandrakeClub Volunteer (www.mandrakeclub.com) homepage: www.groundstate.ca
