Thank you very much Kenneth, they're nice points! Regards.
On 6/30/2018 10:45 AM, Kenneth Knowles wrote: > Hi all, > > The ASF board suggested that we (Beam) share some of what we've been doing > for community development with dev@community.apache.org and > memb...@apache.org. So here is a long description. I have included > d...@beam.apache.org because it is the subject, really, and this is & should > be all public knowledge. > > We would love feedback! We based a lot of this on reading the community > project site, and probably could have learned even more with more study. > > # Background > > We face two problems in our contributor/committer-base: > > 1. Not enough committers to review all the code being contributed, in part > due to recent departure of a few committers > 2. We want our contributor-base (hence committer-base) to be more spread > across companies and backgrounds, for the usual Apache reasons. Our user > base is not active and varied enough to make this automatic. One solution > is to make the right software to get a varied user base, but that is a > different thread :-) so instead we have to work hard to build our community > around the software we have. > > # What we did > > ## Committer guidelines > > We published committer guidelines [1] for transparency and as an > invitation. We start by emphasizing that there are many kinds of > contributions, not just code (we have committers from community > development, tech writing, training, etc). Then we have three aspects: > > 1. ASF code of conduct > 2. ASF committer responsibilities > 3. Beam-specific committer responsibilities > > The best way to understand is to follow the link at the bottom of this > email. The important part is that you shouldn't be proposing a committer > for other reasons, and you shouldn't be blocking a committer for other > reasons. > > ## Instead of just "[DISCUSS] Potential committer XYZ" we discuss every > layer > > Gris (CC'd) outlined this: people go through these phases of relationship > with our project: > > 1. aware of it > 2. interested in it / checking it out > 3. using it for real > 4. first-time contributor > 5. repeat contributor > 6. committer > 7. PMC > > As soon as we notice someone, like a user asking really deep questions, we > invite discussion on private@ on how we can move them to the next level of > engagement. > > ## Monthly cadence > > Every ~month, we call for new discussions and revisit ~all prior > discussions. This way we do not forget to keep up this effort. > > ## Individual discussions > > For each person we have a separate thread on private@. This ensures we have > quality focused discussions that lead to feedback. In collective > discussions that we used to do, we often didn't really come up with > actionable feedback and ended up not even contacting potential committers > to encourage them. And consensus was much less clear. > > ## Feedback! > > If someone is brought up for a discussion, that means they got enough > attention that we hope to engage them more. But unsolicited feedback is > never a good idea. For a potential committer, we did this: > > 1. Send an email saying something like "you were discussed as a potential > committer - do you want to become one? do you want feedback?" > 2. If they say yes (so far everyone) we send a few bullet points from the > discussion and *most important* tie each bullet to the committer > guidelines. If we have no feedback about which guidelines were a concern, > that is a red flag that we are being driven by bias. > > We saw a *very* significant increase in engagement from those we sent > feedback to, and the trend is that they almost all will become committers > over time. > > ## Results > > - Q1 we had no process and we added no new committers or PMC members. > - Q2 when we tried these new things we added 7 committers and 1 PMC > member, with ~3~4 obvious committer candidates for next time around, plus > positive feedback from other contributors, spread across five companies. > > We've had a pretty major uptick in building Beam as a result. > > ## Review-then-commit > > We are dedicated to RTC as the best way to build software. Reviews not only > make the code better, but (with apologies to ASF/GNU differences) as RMS > says "The fundamental act of friendship among programmers is the sharing of > programs" and reviews are where we do that. > > As a minor point, we also changed our "review-then-commit" policy to > require that *either* the reviewer or the author be a committer. Previously > the reviewer had to be a committer. Rationale: if we trust someone as a > committer, we should trust their choice of reviewer. This also helps the > community, as it engages non-committers as reviewers. > > ---- > > If you made it through this long email, thanks for reading! > > Kenn > > [1] https://beam.apache.org/contribute/become-a-committer/ > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@community.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@community.apache.org