On 10/31/2012 11:36 AM, jan iversen wrote:
+1 to your 3 layer strategy.
I have made a proposal for the wiki page, however I am not competent to
fill in the tasks.
http://wiki.openoffice.org/w/index.php?title=Communication/new_contributors&action=submit
I have NOT linked it in anywhere, but a natural link would in
"participation" on the main page.
Jan.
OK, I will bail out from this for now, and see what else develops here.
You know what they say about "too many cooks"... :/
Looking forward to interesting results from both Rob and Jan.
I will certainly help as I see a need.
On 31 October 2012 18:59, Rob Weir <robw...@apache.org> wrote:
On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 1:46 PM, jan iversen <jancasacon...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi.
I think your md pages are SUPER....what I suggested was an additional
wiki
page (actually someone else called it postoffice) where we put small
tasks
that need to be translated / written etc.
So I see your pages go hand in hand with Wiki pages, just too different
levels of interaction with the community.
Right. So maybe when we do a wider "call for volunteers" we can
offer three tracks:
1) Sign up for ooo-dev and "drink from the firehose" (our only current
option)
2) A short intro on the wiki, one that doesn't exist yet, but maybe
someone can write one.
3) A longer self-paced intro on the website (what I'm working on)
They are volunteers, so we can't force them to do anything. But we
can offer them a few choices. I'm happy to provide one of those
choices. Who wants to provide another?
-Rob
jan
On 31 October 2012 16:59, Rob Weir <robw...@apache.org> wrote:
On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 11:51 AM, Kay Schenk <kay.sch...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On 10/28/2012 04:30 PM, Rob Weir wrote:
On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Andrea Pescetti <
pesce...@apache.org>
wrote:
On 23/10/2012 Rob Weir wrote:
New Volunteer Orientation root page:
http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/orientation/
This is an excellent resource. But we received a few requests from
prospective volunteers this weekend and I'm believing it would be
overwhelming to point them there. I still believe these documents
are
excellent, but probably they are assuming our volunteer is above
average,
or
at least willing to engage deeply with the project. They would be
perfect
for me, for you, or for a newcomer like Jan who has the skills and
the
mindset to understand in detail how things work.
And how do we know in advance which volunteers are like Jan and which
are
not?
I think we should find some way to point them to the info and say
that
they are welcome to jump in and ignore this all, or skim it in
parallel with direct participation, or read through this stuff first.
It is entirely up to them.
But generally, the more one needs to interact with other project
participants and other systems and even other parts of Apache, the
more this information becomes useful. Although not stated, one
could
almost say that "Level 4" would be becoming a Committer. So you are
correct that this is a track for a more determined volunteer,
But we will also have (and we do have: most volunteers I see on the
mailing
lists in Italian fall in this category) volunteers who don't care
that
much
about OpenOffice as a project: they use the product and just want to
give
something back. They want to scratch an itch, or just to do
something,
but
they are very task-oriented: they want something to do rather than
something
to read. For example, we may have translation volunteers who would
be
perfectly satisfied if we e-mail them a PO file and tell them to
grab
POEdit
and send the file back; and then they would consider a deeper
engagement,
but not earlier.
Translation volunteers are different in many ways, but even there I
think we need some solid orientation material. They won't go far
before wondering why they cannot write to Pootle and the website, but
others can. That leads us into discussion of roles at Apache, etc.
And we really need to expose them to the Apache License at the
earliest opportunity. We do no one any favors if we're passing
around
PO files via private mail, and receiving translations without any
public record of contribution.
In any case, this is an issue we've had for a while. Becoming a
Committer is a higher hurdle than is appropriate for most translation
volunteers, due to iCLA, etc. The orientation guides did not create
this problem, they merely remind us of it.
And indeed they are not totally wrong: knowing how the Apache Board
works
is
not needed to be able to translate a press release, or a few
OpenOffice
strings, into Italian.
Could it be that we need a "practical" entry point for people who
want
to
help and just want to do it immediately? Placing these information
at
level
3 of the "Volunteer Orientation" seems too much for volunteers who
want
to
jump in and do something (while, again, the orientation guide is
excellent
for a skilled, determined volunteer).
Since "level 3" for translators does not exist yet, it may be too
early to say whether or not is "practical". (I hope it will be
practical). If we make it self-contained, it may be possible for it
be consulted on its own for someone who is not seeking deeper
engagement with the project.
-Rob
Regards,
Andrea.
Rob,
I still support this whole notion. But, maybe it would be better to go
with
more of a "checklist" style instead of the in-depth explanations you
have in
this document.
What if you ported this to the wiki (Jan suggested this as well.
cwiki is
easiest for me but I have no object to wiki.openoffice.org) so those
of
us
that are interested can more easily contribute to this worthwhile
guide.
Of course you are free to start whatever wiki page you wish. But I'll
be continuing with the mdtext pages I've started. This is based on my
experience with providing orientation to many of our Symphony
developers on how Apache projects work and how to participate in such
a community. This approach works. Other approaches might work for
others as well. But I'm going to give this a try.
-Rob
Thanks for starting this. It is needed.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MzK
"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never
dealt with a cat."
-- Robert Heinlein
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MzK
"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never
dealt with a cat."
-- Robert Heinlein
