Clojure Conj is nearly upon us. Last year there was a very positive meeting to discuss and help improve the contribution process. This year I thought it might be helpful to get some ideas on the table and refined by the community before the Conj.
This has also been a common topic in #clojure. I'm doing my best to report my notes from those conversations as well. As always, please be sincere, civil, and constructive. 1.) Clojure.org should have a better host of documentation, especially for newcomers. We saw from the Clojure Survey, as well as threads here on the mailing list, that documentation is still something on which we as a community need to work. Could perhaps a different process govern documentation contributions, something more akin to http://docs.scala-lang.org/contribute.html that doesn't involve the CA? How could we best integrate such a project into Clojure.org? Would anyone be willing to help push such a project forward? 2.) Clojure/dev should announce upcoming changes on the Clojure mailing list and potentially via a blog connected to Planet Clojure This used to happen more frequently, and was a nice way to keep the community included in the evolution of the language. It could even be a weekly column in something as informal as the Clojure Gazette or something monthly if that's more appropriate. Ideally updates would include core as well as contrib. Perhaps someone in the community wants to step up to fill this gap? (I would be more than happy to send out changelogs and summaries to the mailing list) 3.) Much like an Emergency Room, there should be a a fast-track to getting smaller patches approved and merged. This is actually not a problem consistent across all areas of the language - some contrib libraries and ClojureScript in particular seem to be getting this *just right*. Is there a way we can adjust the current workflow to fill need? It seems like even with more screeners, patches are sitting idle. One possible solution is if we extended contrib-like ownership into parts of Clojure proper, like clojure.test, clojure.string, etc. 4.) What are the limitations behind changing the CA process? Can the CA process be made digital (a scan of a signed CA, SSH shared key, OAuth credential confirmation) or potentially reformed to allow more of the community to easily get involved, especially for smaller patches or doc changes? After looking at similar communities (Scala - http://docs.scala-lang.org/sips/sip-submission.html, Python - http://www.python.org/psf/contrib/), it seems like there are potential improvements we could make as the language, ecosystem, and community evolve. An additional project idea: A nice start to unifying the documentation could be gathering all the CC 3 licensed Clojure-related works, organizing them, and linking them together. Anyone want to take it and run with it? Thoughts? Paul -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
