Re: [Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-25 Thread Stephen J. Turnbull
Karthikeyan writes:

 > I would also recommend waiting for a core dev or someone to provide some
 > feedback or confirmation on even an easy issue's fix

FWIW, I don't think waiting on core devs is a very good idea, because
we just don't have enough free core dev time, and I don't think we (or
any project!) ever will -- if core devs have enough free time to do
lots of triage and commenting, they're the kind of developer who also
has plenty of own projects on the back burner.

OTOH, new developers aren't going to know who the core devs are, and
it's probably true that an issue with comments on it is likely to be
easier to get your head wrapped around than one without.  (I don't
know that non-core devs are any more likely to make comments, though.)

 > since it's easy to propose a fix to be later rejected due to
 > various reasons

This is certainly true, but:

 > resulting in wasted work

I have to disagree.  Learning is hard work, and at least you get to
spend that effort on Python doing it the way you think is right.  If
you got it wrong in the opinion of a committer, you learn something,
because they're usually right (for Python), that's how they get to be
core developers.

The work that I consider wasted is when I tell the boss that the idea
sucks and why, they say we're going to do it so STFU and write, and
then when they see the product they say "Ohh."

 > and disappointment.

Yes.  It is disappointing when something you think is useful, even
important, gets tabled just before the feature freeze.  Especially
when it gets postponed because somebody has decided that something
unrelated that your code touches that's not broke needs fixing[1] but
they haven't decided what that means.

My answer to that is to have lots of little projects pending time to
work on them, even though I'm not a core developer.  FWIW, YMMV as
they say.

Footnotes: 
[1]  Good luck parsing that, but I'm sure you know the feeling.

-- 
Associate Professor  Division of Policy and Planning Science
http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/ Faculty of Systems and Information
Email: turnb...@sk.tsukuba.ac.jp   University of Tsukuba
Tel: 029-853-5175 Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
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Re: [Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-24 Thread Karthikeyan
On Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 1:07 PM Terry Reedy  wrote:

> On 2/23/2019 2:50 PM, Cheryl Sabella wrote:
>
>   AM Karthikeyan  wrote:
> > I would also recommend waiting for a core dev or someone to provide
> > some feedback or confirmation on even an easy issue's fix since it's
> > easy to propose a fix to be later rejected due to various reasons
> > resulting in wasted work and disappointment.
> >
> > Agreed, but perhaps the most helpful way to do that is to propose the
> > fix in a comment on the bug tracker and then, if a core dev or expert
> > says it's a good idea, then move ahead with it?
>
> I agree with both of you as to what contributors, especially new
> contributors, *should* do.  But they sometimes race to 'grab' an issue
> by (prematurely) submitting a PR, sometimes after ignoring coredev
> comments and disagreements.  I have occasionally said on an issue that a
> PR was premature.
>

I guess it could be due to the initial excitement in contributing to a
large project. I must admit I too did some mistakes in my initial set of
PRs along similar lines. I guess it's one of the things both someone
contributing new and a regular contributor should learn over the course of
time that there are cases where the solution might seem important from the
perspective of the contributor in getting code merged but provides less
value amidst other factors like code maintenance, backwards compatibility,
etc.

There is also high interest in creating a PR and less on reviewing other
PRs (1020 open PRs on GitHub) which could be a separate topic on its own.
There could be some action or motivation on making sure there is a balance
in the incoming PRs and review bandwidth since there might be a stage where
there is a lot of interest or efforts in getting new contributors who
create a PR with less bandwidth to review resulting in potentially making
them disappointed in having work not reviewed. We should be getting new
people on board and it's not that I complaining but this is something that
the steering council could discuss upon regarding reviews and there was a
recent thread on it [0]

[0]
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-committers/2019-February/006517.html

-- 
Regards,
Karthikeyan S
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Re: [Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-23 Thread Terry Reedy

On 2/23/2019 2:50 PM, Cheryl Sabella wrote:

 AM Karthikeyan  wrote:

I would also recommend waiting for a core dev or someone to provide
some feedback or confirmation on even an easy issue's fix since it's
easy to propose a fix to be later rejected due to various reasons
resulting in wasted work and disappointment.

Agreed, but perhaps the most helpful way to do that is to propose the 
fix in a comment on the bug tracker and then, if a core dev or expert 
says it's a good idea, then move ahead with it?


I agree with both of you as to what contributors, especially new 
contributors, *should* do.  But they sometimes race to 'grab' an issue 
by (prematurely) submitting a PR, sometimes after ignoring coredev 
comments and disagreements.  I have occasionally said on an issue that a 
PR was premature.


What really annoys me is if I say on an issue "Maybe we should add this 
sentence: 'jkjsf j fsjk sjkf sjskjfjs  sflsj sfjsfjljsgjgeij k fjlfjs.' 
What do others think?" and within an hour someone who is incapable of 
writing or even properly reviewing the sentence mechanically copies it 
into a PR.  I see this as intellectual theft and have been tempted to 
close a couple of PRs as such.


--
Terry Jan Reedy

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Re: [Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-23 Thread Cheryl Sabella
On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 11:11 AM Karthikeyan  wrote:

> I would also suggest cleaning up the existing set of easy issues where the
> issues was tagged as easy initially followed by discussion about how the
> though easy has other concerns like backwards compatibility due to which it
> can't be merged. It's getting hard to get more easy issues and what could
> seem as an easy fix might later expand into a discussion that the beginner
> might not have enough context to answer and in that case the easy tag
> should be removed. It's even harder over realizing when to fix it by myself
> or tag it as easy for someone to fix it because if it's fixed by a regular
> contributor then there could be a thought that I myself could have done it
> since triaging itself is a difficult work.
>
> I agree that many issues need to have the 'easy' tag removed.  There
really isn't a stage on the tracker for 'in discussion' or 'deadlocked'.  I
think 'languishing' was the closest status for that.  When I've added
'easy' to older issues in the past, I try not to do more than one or two a
day.  That way, the nosy list doesn't get spammed too much and there aren't
too many issues that float to the first page.  Maybe something similar for
removing the 'easy' tag?  Only change a few day, but also leave a comment
summarizing the discussion (if it had been long), or just saying "X core
dev thinks it should be this way and Y core dev thinks this, so until that
is resolved, this is no longer an easy issue."  A comment would help
because you would have done some research, so that communicates to others
what you found out about the ticket.

I certainly didn't intend for my first week as a core dev to be about
trying to change the workflow, so apologies in advance if anyone thinks
this is too drastic.



> I would also recommend waiting for a core dev or someone to provide some
> feedback or confirmation on even an easy issue's fix since it's easy to
> propose a fix to be later rejected due to various reasons resulting in
> wasted work and disappointment.
>
>
Agreed, but perhaps the most helpful way to do that is to propose the fix
in a comment on the bug tracker and then, if a core dev or expert says it's
a good idea, then move ahead with it?  Although, just recently for IDLE, I
made a suggestion on the tracker and then my code wasn't what Terry
expected, so sometimes the clearest explanation *is* a code change.  But,
for any change that someone will spend some time on, then there should
probably be consensus first.


> PS : Using mailing list for the first time apologies if I have done
> anything wrong.
>
> You did great!  This topic was my first post too, so I know exactly what
you mean.   :-)
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Re: [Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-22 Thread Karthikeyan
I would also suggest cleaning up the existing set of easy issues where the
issues was tagged as easy initially followed by discussion about how the
though easy has other concerns like backwards compatibility due to which it
can't be merged. It's getting hard to get more easy issues and what could
seem as an easy fix might later expand into a discussion that the beginner
might not have enough context to answer and in that case the easy tag
should be removed. It's even harder over realizing when to fix it by myself
or tag it as easy for someone to fix it because if it's fixed by a regular
contributor then there could be a thought that I myself could have done it
since triaging itself is a difficult work.

I would also recommend waiting for a core dev or someone to provide some
feedback or confirmation on even an easy issue's fix since it's easy to
propose a fix to be later rejected due to various reasons resulting in
wasted work and disappointment.

PS : Using mailing list for the first time apologies if I have done
anything wrong.

On Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:40 PM Victor Stinner  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Let me share with you (this mailing list) my experience with mentoring
> and what we call "easy issue". First of all, almost all "easy issues"
> are very hard issues: issues open for longer than one year, with many
> comments, and nobody succeeded to come up with a solution (well,
> otherwise the issue would be closed, no? ;-)). Does it mean that there
> is no easy issue? Well, when someone creates a really easy issue, it's
> usually fixed in less than 2 hours(!): either by a core dev who want
> to relax their brain, or by a contributor eager to get more commits
> under their name.
>
> It's not uncommon that even if an issue is marked as easy (easy
> keyword and [EASY] in the title), it's fixed by a core a dev. Or at
> least by a "regular" contributor who wants to get more commits. For a
> regular contributor, I see the point of getting more commits: getting
> more visible. But in my criteria to promote a contributor as a core
> dev, it's not enough. It's not with easy issue that you learn hard
> stuff: trade off between backward compatibility and new features which
> has to break it, write complex test, document properly a change, etc.
>
> Does it mean that we don't need easy issue? No. For someone who really
> starts from the beginning, easy issues are required. You cannot ask a
> newcomer to immediately write the perfect PR at the first attempt with
> a long list of strict requirements: complex tests, handle portability
> issues, etc. You need to build a stair made of *small* steps.
>
> What's the solution? I'm not sure. I decided to stop opening public
> issues for my mentorees and instead give them easy bugs by private
> email. Why? My main concern is the high pressure on an open issue: the
> race to be the first to produce a PR. Recently, I opened a public
> issue anyway but explicitly wrote that it's reserved for my mentoree.
> Someone ignored the message and wrote a PR... It was a first time
> contributor and it was really hard to me to reject the PR :-( (My
> mentoree wrote a better PR with my help, at least a PR closer to what
> I expected, obviously since I helped.)
>
> I prefer to give unlimited time to my mentoree to dig into the code,
> ask questions, write code step by step. I really hate the time
> pressure of the race on open easy issues :-(
>
> Now the question is: how can *you* find an easy issue? Well. In the
> past, my real problem was that I didn't let anyone write the code that
> I would like to write myself. I considered that nobody writes code as
> well as I do... Sorry :-) It took me time to change my mind.
>
> Lao Tsu said that if you give a hungry man a fish,
> you feed him for a day,
> but if you teach him how to fish,
> you feed him for a lifetim
>
> To better scale horizontally, I have to teach other people what I do,
> to be able to distribute the work.
>
> I am working hard against myself to stop writing all code myself.
> Instead, I'm trying to explain carefully what I would like to do,
> split the work into tasks, and distribute these tasks to my mentorees,
> one by one. But I don't put my mentorees in a competition, each
> mentoree has its own project which doesn't conflict with others.
>
> Doing that takes me a lot of time: create tasks, follow tasks, review
> PRs, etc. To be honest, right now, I'm mostly able to follow correctly
> only one mentoree at the same time. The others are more "on their own"
> (sorry!). As you may know, finding a task doable by mentorees is hard.
> I have a lot of ideas, but many ideas will take years to be
> implemented and are controversial :-)
>
> I don't ask you to completely stop writing code. I ask you to not
> write everything yourself, and sometimes give the simplest issues to
> contributors who are eager to help you.
>
> Victor
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> 

Re: [Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-22 Thread Victor Stinner
Hi,

Let me share with you (this mailing list) my experience with mentoring
and what we call "easy issue". First of all, almost all "easy issues"
are very hard issues: issues open for longer than one year, with many
comments, and nobody succeeded to come up with a solution (well,
otherwise the issue would be closed, no? ;-)). Does it mean that there
is no easy issue? Well, when someone creates a really easy issue, it's
usually fixed in less than 2 hours(!): either by a core dev who want
to relax their brain, or by a contributor eager to get more commits
under their name.

It's not uncommon that even if an issue is marked as easy (easy
keyword and [EASY] in the title), it's fixed by a core a dev. Or at
least by a "regular" contributor who wants to get more commits. For a
regular contributor, I see the point of getting more commits: getting
more visible. But in my criteria to promote a contributor as a core
dev, it's not enough. It's not with easy issue that you learn hard
stuff: trade off between backward compatibility and new features which
has to break it, write complex test, document properly a change, etc.

Does it mean that we don't need easy issue? No. For someone who really
starts from the beginning, easy issues are required. You cannot ask a
newcomer to immediately write the perfect PR at the first attempt with
a long list of strict requirements: complex tests, handle portability
issues, etc. You need to build a stair made of *small* steps.

What's the solution? I'm not sure. I decided to stop opening public
issues for my mentorees and instead give them easy bugs by private
email. Why? My main concern is the high pressure on an open issue: the
race to be the first to produce a PR. Recently, I opened a public
issue anyway but explicitly wrote that it's reserved for my mentoree.
Someone ignored the message and wrote a PR... It was a first time
contributor and it was really hard to me to reject the PR :-( (My
mentoree wrote a better PR with my help, at least a PR closer to what
I expected, obviously since I helped.)

I prefer to give unlimited time to my mentoree to dig into the code,
ask questions, write code step by step. I really hate the time
pressure of the race on open easy issues :-(

Now the question is: how can *you* find an easy issue? Well. In the
past, my real problem was that I didn't let anyone write the code that
I would like to write myself. I considered that nobody writes code as
well as I do... Sorry :-) It took me time to change my mind.

Lao Tsu said that if you give a hungry man a fish,
you feed him for a day,
but if you teach him how to fish,
you feed him for a lifetim

To better scale horizontally, I have to teach other people what I do,
to be able to distribute the work.

I am working hard against myself to stop writing all code myself.
Instead, I'm trying to explain carefully what I would like to do,
split the work into tasks, and distribute these tasks to my mentorees,
one by one. But I don't put my mentorees in a competition, each
mentoree has its own project which doesn't conflict with others.

Doing that takes me a lot of time: create tasks, follow tasks, review
PRs, etc. To be honest, right now, I'm mostly able to follow correctly
only one mentoree at the same time. The others are more "on their own"
(sorry!). As you may know, finding a task doable by mentorees is hard.
I have a lot of ideas, but many ideas will take years to be
implemented and are controversial :-)

I don't ask you to completely stop writing code. I ask you to not
write everything yourself, and sometimes give the simplest issues to
contributors who are eager to help you.

Victor
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Re: [Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-21 Thread Guido van Rossum
In the mypy project we've definitely experienced the problem with
"beginner" issues that they would be fixed by disinterested folks who just
wanted to score some GitHub points, and we stopped doing that. While we've
not kept track carefully, my impression is that we've not seen the quantity
of contributions go down, and we've seen fewer one-time contributors.
There's still the occasional contributor who fixes a doc typo and then is
never heard from again, but those are easy to accept (but CPython's PR
process is much more heavy-weight than mypy's.)

On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 10:18 PM Stephen J. Turnbull <
turnbull.stephen...@u.tsukuba.ac.jp> wrote:

> Steve Dower writes:
>
>  > I'm sympathetic to wanting to have tasks for the PyCon sprints, but at
>  > the same time it feels exclusionary to "save" them from people who want
>  > to volunteer at other times.
>
> It's already possible to do this sub rosa.  Just get a mentor to
> "claim" the issue, and have a separate page listing them for the
> mentored sprint attendees.  I think it's reasonable for each mentor to
> claim a couple of issues.  Worth a try for a year at multiple sprints,
> no?
>
> If people worry that once it's been done for a year, the mentors will
> claim it in perpetuity, they can lobby the Council to explicitly
> sunset the practice, so that the Council would have to act to extend
> the privilege of reserving issues in this way.
>
>  > I'm 100% in favor of discouraging regular contributors from fixing
>  > them - we should be *generating* easy issues by describing how to
>  > fix it and then walking away.
>
> "Generate", of course!  But creating a bug report clear enough for
> another to reproduce and then fix a problem is far more effort than
> doing it yourself in many, probably most, cases.  Some people are
> already doing this, I'm sure, but to dramatically increase the number
> of such issues, there would need to be strong incentive for
> experienced developers to do the extra work.[1]  One such incentive
> might be to require mentors to tag one (or more) easy issue(s) for
> each one they "claim" for sprints.  ("More" would compensate for the
> possibility that a PR would be generated and applied significantly
> faster.)
>
> The point of Cheryl's proposal is specifically NOT to walk away, but
> to rather provide in-person mentoring at a sprint.  True, this is
> creating a privileged class from people who can be present at PyCon.
> We shouldn't award such privileges lightly.  But ISTM there are two
> kinds of mentoring: the first is "patch piloting" the contribution
> through the contribution process.  The second is helping the
> contributor navigate the existing code and produce new or modified
> code in good core Python style.
>
> It's not clear to me why the first needs to take place at a sprint.
> The contribution process is entirely formal, and there is no
> overwhelming need to privilege a subset of potential contributors for
> "trivial" changes.
>
> If this is a reasonable way to look at it, the "reserved for sprint"
> issues should be difficult enough coding to deserve some mentoring, of
> a kind that is best done in person.  Eg, doc issues (including message
> and error strings) should be excluded from the reservable class.  The
> mentored sprint new contributors should be encouraged to work on some
> trivial issues before the sprint.  ("Required" doesn't make sense to
> me, since there are probably a lot who are new to coding entirely.)
>
>  > I'm just not entirely comfortable with trying to also hide them
>  > from first time contributors.
>
> I too feel that discomfort, but there are a number of good reasons to
> privilege PyCon attendees.  The special "mentored sprints" are
> intentionally diversity-enhancing.  If restricted as I suggest, the
> issues themselves benefit from personal mentoring, and so this will
> both improve education of new contributors and be an efficient use of
> mentor time.  Finally, these contributors have demonstrated both a
> financial commitment and a time commitment to Python, an interest in
> contributing *to Python*, and so are more likely to become consistent
> contributors than, say, GSoC students who just want to demonstrate
> that they understand the PR process to qualify for the $5500.[2]
>
> Finally, if my analysis above is correct, these issues aren't hidden
> in any important way.  The hidden issues are the ones that get fixed
> "en passant" as core devs work on something else.
>
>  > Either way, I'll keep marking issues as Easy when I think they are
>  > good first contributions.
>
> Of course!
>
>
> Footnotes:
> [1]  Please tell me I'm wrong about Python!  But fixing minor issues
> "en passant" is my experience in every other project I've contributed
> to, including as a non-committing "new contributor" in the first few
> patches.
>
> [2]  Not saying that GSoC students don't want to contribute *to
> Python*, just that their financial incentive goes "the wrong way"
> relative to PyCon 

Re: [Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-21 Thread Stephen J. Turnbull
Steve Dower writes:

 > I'm sympathetic to wanting to have tasks for the PyCon sprints, but at 
 > the same time it feels exclusionary to "save" them from people who want 
 > to volunteer at other times.

It's already possible to do this sub rosa.  Just get a mentor to
"claim" the issue, and have a separate page listing them for the
mentored sprint attendees.  I think it's reasonable for each mentor to
claim a couple of issues.  Worth a try for a year at multiple sprints,
no?

If people worry that once it's been done for a year, the mentors will
claim it in perpetuity, they can lobby the Council to explicitly
sunset the practice, so that the Council would have to act to extend
the privilege of reserving issues in this way.

 > I'm 100% in favor of discouraging regular contributors from fixing
 > them - we should be *generating* easy issues by describing how to
 > fix it and then walking away.

"Generate", of course!  But creating a bug report clear enough for
another to reproduce and then fix a problem is far more effort than
doing it yourself in many, probably most, cases.  Some people are
already doing this, I'm sure, but to dramatically increase the number
of such issues, there would need to be strong incentive for
experienced developers to do the extra work.[1]  One such incentive
might be to require mentors to tag one (or more) easy issue(s) for
each one they "claim" for sprints.  ("More" would compensate for the
possibility that a PR would be generated and applied significantly
faster.)

The point of Cheryl's proposal is specifically NOT to walk away, but
to rather provide in-person mentoring at a sprint.  True, this is
creating a privileged class from people who can be present at PyCon.
We shouldn't award such privileges lightly.  But ISTM there are two
kinds of mentoring: the first is "patch piloting" the contribution
through the contribution process.  The second is helping the
contributor navigate the existing code and produce new or modified
code in good core Python style.

It's not clear to me why the first needs to take place at a sprint.
The contribution process is entirely formal, and there is no
overwhelming need to privilege a subset of potential contributors for
"trivial" changes.

If this is a reasonable way to look at it, the "reserved for sprint"
issues should be difficult enough coding to deserve some mentoring, of
a kind that is best done in person.  Eg, doc issues (including message
and error strings) should be excluded from the reservable class.  The
mentored sprint new contributors should be encouraged to work on some
trivial issues before the sprint.  ("Required" doesn't make sense to
me, since there are probably a lot who are new to coding entirely.)

 > I'm just not entirely comfortable with trying to also hide them
 > from first time contributors.

I too feel that discomfort, but there are a number of good reasons to
privilege PyCon attendees.  The special "mentored sprints" are
intentionally diversity-enhancing.  If restricted as I suggest, the
issues themselves benefit from personal mentoring, and so this will
both improve education of new contributors and be an efficient use of
mentor time.  Finally, these contributors have demonstrated both a
financial commitment and a time commitment to Python, an interest in
contributing *to Python*, and so are more likely to become consistent
contributors than, say, GSoC students who just want to demonstrate
that they understand the PR process to qualify for the $5500.[2]

Finally, if my analysis above is correct, these issues aren't hidden
in any important way.  The hidden issues are the ones that get fixed
"en passant" as core devs work on something else.

 > Either way, I'll keep marking issues as Easy when I think they are
 > good first contributions.

Of course!


Footnotes: 
[1]  Please tell me I'm wrong about Python!  But fixing minor issues
"en passant" is my experience in every other project I've contributed
to, including as a non-committing "new contributor" in the first few
patches.

[2]  Not saying that GSoC students don't want to contribute *to
Python*, just that their financial incentive goes "the wrong way"
relative to PyCon attendees.

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Re: [Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-21 Thread Cheryl Sabella
> I'm 100% in favor of discouraging regular contributors from fixing them
>

This would be nice too.  Speaking from my experience, it's hard to leave
the comfort of what looks to be a quick win (by submitting a PR on an easy
issue) and moving on to something where you're more unsure.  But...


> - we should be *generating* easy issues by describing how to fix it and
> then walking away.


What a great idea!  Maybe that could be written up under the triager
section of the devguide as a way to triage.  An experienced person can do
the legwork, just short of submitting the PR, and then help mentor a
newcomer who wants to follow it through.  This might be worth a thread on
its own.


> I'm just not entirely comfortable with trying to also
> hide them from first time contributors. Either way, I'll keep marking
> issues as Easy when I think they are good first contributions.
>
>
Thanks!  :-)
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Re: [Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-21 Thread Mariatta
Cheryl, thanks for starting this thread and for helping to find easy issues
to be worked on.

I'm sympathetic to wanting to have tasks for the PyCon sprints, but at
> the same time it feels exclusionary to "save" them from people who want
> to volunteer at other times. Having paid to attend PyCon shouldn't be a
> barrier or a privilege for contributing (though it's certainly a
> smoother road by having contributors there to assist, which is why other
> conferences/sprints are keen to have core developers attend as mentors).


I understand your concern, but I hope people understand that the mentored
sprint is a little bit different than the regular sprint days.
The target audience of the mentored sprint are folks who are
underrepresented minorities, in my personal experience, they are less
privileged to begin with.
We want to be inclusive, and therefore we're encouraging those who are not
from underrepresented group to bring along someone else from
underrepresented group with them.

The mentored sprint is taking place during the main conference days, and
looking at the signups, most of the participants have told us they want to
sprint for 4 hours on Saturday afternoon.
This means they will be missing out on lots of quality talks happening at
the same time which they paid for.
Our goal is really to make contributing more accessible by paring them up
with mentors, but without straightforward issues to be worked on, they
can't continue effectively.

The issues that's been earmarked for the mentored sprint are so far
documentation and typo fixes and not urgent issues.
I don't believe that we're "stealing away" opportunity to contribute from
those who weren't able to come to PyCon, but I understand that point of
view.

In any case, I'm appreciative to those who have helped find issues to be
worked on the mentored sprint, and I also understand that I can't (and
won't) stop other people from working on these issues before the sprint at
PyCon.

While I'm here, I'd like to invite you all to participate in the mentored
sprint if you can. Help spread the word, or sign up to mentor.
Any open source project is welcome to sign up! Check the page for more
details. https://us.pycon.org/2019/hatchery/mentoredsprints/

I'm a little busy with PyCascades until next Monday, but after that I'll be
happy to answer any questions about the mentored sprint.


ᐧ
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Re: [Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-21 Thread Steve Dower

On 21Feb2019 1258, Cheryl Sabella wrote:

I agree completely. We normally add the "Easy" or "Easy (C)"
keywords to
mark these (the latter for issues that involve C code), and these are
collected under the "Easy issues" link at the left hand side of the
tracker.

Any reason to change from this process?


Thanks for asking about this.  The intent isn't to stop the use of the 
'easy' keyword, but to try to reserve some tickets for May.  If they are 
just marked as 'easy', then there could be more of a risk that someone 
would work on it before the sprints.  By assigning them to Mariatta, it 
will serve the dual purpose of trying to reserve these as well as making 
them easier to find later on.  I think the equivalent would be the 
ability to add an additional tag to GitHub issues, such as when there's 
a 'good first date', 'help wanted' and 'sprint' tag on the same ticket.


But, I also don't want to complicate the current process, so I apologize 
if my idea isn't constructive.


I'm just trying to keep things easy to search.

Keywords are the bpo equivalent of GitHub tags, so if we want a 
"saved_for_sprint" tag then we should add a new keyword. (In my 
experience, "sprint" tags on GitHub are normally used on PRs to indicate 
that they were created at a sprint.)


I'm sympathetic to wanting to have tasks for the PyCon sprints, but at 
the same time it feels exclusionary to "save" them from people who want 
to volunteer at other times. Having paid to attend PyCon shouldn't be a 
barrier or a privilege for contributing (though it's certainly a 
smoother road by having contributors there to assist, which is why other 
conferences/sprints are keen to have core developers attend as mentors).


I'm 100% in favor of discouraging regular contributors from fixing them 
- we should be *generating* easy issues by describing how to fix it and 
then walking away. I'm just not entirely comfortable with trying to also 
hide them from first time contributors. Either way, I'll keep marking 
issues as Easy when I think they are good first contributions.


Cheers,
Steve
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Re: [Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-21 Thread Lysandros Nikolaou
On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 9:59 PM Cheryl Sabella  wrote:

> I agree completely. We normally add the "Easy" or "Easy (C)" keywords to
>> mark these (the latter for issues that involve C code), and these are
>> collected under the "Easy issues" link at the left hand side of the
>> tracker.
>>
>> Any reason to change from this process?
>>
>>
Yeah, I think some kind of separation between the two would be needed in
this case. There are some of us newbies, who frequently click the "Easy"
button, so that we find some issue to tackle. Some kind of marking an issue
as a "sprint issue" would quickly tell me that the issue is not available
to take on.

If that's not done, there's the risk that a good number of easy issues
would be closed until the sprint.
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Re: [Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-21 Thread Cheryl Sabella
>
> I agree completely. We normally add the "Easy" or "Easy (C)" keywords to
> mark these (the latter for issues that involve C code), and these are
> collected under the "Easy issues" link at the left hand side of the
> tracker.
>
> Any reason to change from this process?
>
>
Thanks for asking about this.  The intent isn't to stop the use of the
'easy' keyword, but to try to reserve some tickets for May.  If they are
just marked as 'easy', then there could be more of a risk that someone
would work on it before the sprints.  By assigning them to Mariatta, it
will serve the dual purpose of trying to reserve these as well as making
them easier to find later on.  I think the equivalent would be the ability
to add an additional tag to GitHub issues, such as when there's a 'good
first date', 'help wanted' and 'sprint' tag on the same ticket.

But, I also don't want to complicate the current process, so I apologize if
my idea isn't constructive.
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Re: [Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-21 Thread Steve Dower

On 21Feb2019 0557, Cheryl Sabella wrote:
If you find anything you think is suitable, please add a comment with 
'good first issue' and nosy me or Mariatta on it.  If you're unsure, 
then nosy us anyway.  It would be awesome to have too many issues to 
choose from than not enough.  If an issue isn't worked on at the sprint, 
then it would still be available to new contributors afterwards, so the 
exercise of flagging the issues wouldn't be wasted effort.


I agree completely. We normally add the "Easy" or "Easy (C)" keywords to 
mark these (the latter for issues that involve C code), and these are 
collected under the "Easy issues" link at the left hand side of the tracker.


Any reason to change from this process?

Cheers,
Steve
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[Python-Dev] "Good first issues" on the bug tracker

2019-02-21 Thread Cheryl Sabella
Hello!

Due to the upcoming sprints at PyCon, there will be issues marked in the
bug tracker as 'Good first issues'.  Please do *not* submit pull requests
for these as it is difficult to find suitable issues.

Instead of working on these issues, I'd like to propose a much more
difficult challenge to current contributors looking for something to work
on.  Please find issues which can be tackled at the sprint!  They are out
there, but the trick is finding them.  :-)

Here's the link to the mentored sprint page to understand the audience:
https://us.pycon.org/2019/hatchery/mentoredsprints/

I don't think this needs to be limited to documentation changes, but those
are the obvious choice (even the devguide suggests it).  The goal is really
workflow, meaning the new contributor doesn't necessarily have to solve the
problem themselves - if an issue says: x function in y module needs to have
z applied, then there's a lot of hurdles there for a newcomer which may not
involve solving the problem.

If you find anything you think is suitable, please add a comment with 'good
first issue' and nosy me or Mariatta on it.  If you're unsure, then nosy us
anyway.  It would be awesome to have too many issues to choose from than
not enough.  If an issue isn't worked on at the sprint, then it would still
be available to new contributors afterwards, so the exercise of flagging
the issues wouldn't be wasted effort.

Thanks!
Cheryl
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