I'm fairly new to Airflow community and I'd like to share my main struggle. Mailing lists is very hard to onboard: there is no easy available discussion archives (clicking for every new message seems weird); it is hard to respond to particular mail; you can not easily unfollow non-relevant discussions; you can't edit your previous message. Also mailing lists feels outdated. I think we could be much friendlier to newcomers if we move our main discussions to more modern service like slack. It's free tier a little clunky, but maybe there are non-commercial tiers. If not there are alternatives like gitter, etc. Probably anything would be friendly then mail list. Anton.
On Sun, Dec 29, 2019, 18:37 Jarek Potiuk <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello everyone, > > TL; DR; I wanted to start a non-technical discussion about being (even > more) welcoming community. > > It's a long read - following some deep discussions I had recently and you > might not be interested in it, so feel free to skip the entirety of it. > > I also believe this might become quickly a controversial topic and > mis-communication over email can easily happen - so I would like to ask > everyone to be considerate and open-minded when responding. > > *Some context - how welcoming are we now ?* > > First of all I think we are doing a lot as community to be really welcoming > and friendly. A lot that we do is really opening up in various ways to new > community members, users, existing contributors etc. We are responsive, > helpful, we try to actively reach-out to get users opinions (the survey). > We are open to invite non-code-committers to get "committer status" (that's > highly encouraged by the Apache Software Foundation!) or even PMC members > (yeah!). We organise events (Meetups and upcoming Airflow Summits), > workshops for users and new contributors. We are making it easier for new > contributors to start contributing - by environment and documentation > improvements. > > At the same time we have certain expectations/barrier of entry. It's not > super easy to join the community and you must really earn your status to > become a committer/PMC member. I think we are fairly good as a community in > enforcing that in deliberate and firm ways - and all this without being > rude or aggressive. I remember one of the first emails when I joined the > community where I was firmly but friendly reminded that in this community > decisions are made by the community and not a bunch of people talking at > slack and agreeing to something between them. That was a very important > lesson to me - and first trigger to learn what ApacheWay is. And it was > super cool even though I felt I have to apologize for my lack of > understanding how this all works (which I did). > > We have certain expectations for PRs/code - some enforced automatically, > some by comments/discussions/review process. And we have expectations for > engagement of people submitting the code. They are supposed to follow-up > their PRs - being responsible to get the PRs to submission and engage > committers when they need it. We also encourage people not only to > finger-point things to fix but also engage and help with fixing things they > find or even improve the processes. > > I think it's rather good mixture of openness/barrier of entry. When someone > new joins any community - has to first adapt and show how they can be > valuable for the community before he or she can influence the way community > works. So it's great that there are firm boundaries and expectations and > that we clearly explain them to anyone that tries to join and we expect > those people to follow the expectations before we invite them further after > they "earned" the status. This is best described in the "meritocracy" rule > defined here: > https://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#meritocracy . We are > following it really well I think. > > I believe in many ways we are much better than a number of other > open-source communities and we are following ApacheWay fairly well. And > I've heard personally a member of the board of the Apache Software > Foundation praising how welcoming Apache Airflow community is. > > *So why the discussion at all if we are in such good shape ?* > > I just wanted to see if we can do better than that - and whether we need to > do better currently at all. > > I think it's fairly easy to overlook the moment when we should do something > more. Maybe we can change something to be even more welcoming. Maybe we can > get people engaged who currently do not engage because it is too difficult? > Maybe we miss another point of view because of that? Maybe some of the > rules we have should be updated? Maybe people who feel excluded do not > speak here because they feel the barrier of entry is too big and they are > afraid they will not be heard or will be ignored or will be shouted at. I > think it's better to discuss such things when everything looks great and > when there is a good "vibe" in the community rather than being triggered by > people complaining after it becomes a problem and when the "vibe" > deteriorates. > > The trigger for my thoughts was a looong discussion I had with one of the > attendees of PyDataWarsaw conference a few weeks ago at the after-party. We > talked for several hours I think, and we were the last ones to leave the > party grounds (yes it was 3 am or so :D ). The person I spoke to raised a > few important topics - like "not everyone has enough courage to openly > speak at the discussion list first" or "unconsciously people are valuing > less contributions by women" (there is a study confirming that > > https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/women-considered-better-coders-hide-gender-github > ) > and "some people need a kind of mentorship when they enter new community > and after the introduction they become great contributors" - and he had > some really good examples for all those statements from his own experience. > After the discussion he read about Apache Way (as I advised him), looked at > our discussions and he wrote to me a few days ago that he sees how > welcoming we are and that we are addressing a lot of the concerns he has in > really good way - but nevertheless it stuck with me a bit and I thought - > maybe he is right that we should discuss it. > > For example - while we have two women on the PMC member list, almost all > the people committing the code are male (I believe). This - of course - > reflects the state of our industry and is nothing new, but maybe we are > (unconsciously) doing something in our discussions in devlistt or slack or > reviews that puts off people who otherwise would be valuable to our > community? The friend of mine who triggered my thinking had a great point > that not everyone new has the courage to speak openly at the devlist or > slack initially. Maybe we should reach out in a different way to those > people? Or maybe we should think about some kind of mentorship for new > people so that we can guide people through the first stages of becoming > contributors and navigate the way our community works? > > It looks like we already have people from all over the world - US, Europe, > India, Japan, Australia, China. We have meetups in almost all of those > places. But maybe we could do more to get more people contributing/users > invited from some places (for example we have no meetups in China yet and > not a lot of people from South America I think). Again - maybe we can do > something about it ?. I know there was an event in Mexico where we had > Airflow workshop - maybe we can reach out to people there somehow :) ? > There was also a great presentation about Chinese user community at the > ApacheCon Europe few months ago > > https://aceu19.apachecon.com/session/inviting-apache-flinks-chinese-user-community > on > how difficult it is to get people in China contributing because of the > language barrier. Maybe we should get more workshops for new contributors > in Chinese/Mandarin in China initially and get some contributors from there > (writing description of a PR might be easier even for someone who has > difficulties speaking english or you can have someone who will be your > local mentor for that). > > I do not have concrete proposals yet, or I do not ask you to have them > immediately. I don't even know yet if we should do something or not. But I > wanted to open up discussion to hear what others think about it - both > active members of our community and those who are just listening and rarely > discuss. > > Maybe we are really in a good state and we should just continue? Or maybe > there are some easy things we can do as a community to get better at being > more welcoming ? Also maybe we should forward the discussion elsewhere > (users@?/Slack?/Meetups?) so that others who are not reading the devlist > can chime in ? > > I'd really love to hear what others think about it! > > Again - please be considerate and open-minded - this might quickly become a > controversial subject and miscommunication is almost certain, so let's all > be careful with words and statements. > > J. > > -- > > Jarek Potiuk > Polidea <https://www.polidea.com/> | Principal Software Engineer > > M: +48 660 796 129 <+48660796129> > [image: Polidea] <https://www.polidea.com/> >
