[top posting] Super! and I look forward to seeing how this evolves.
On 02/07/2016 08:01 AM, Daniel Gruno wrote: > Hi ComDev folks! Ramblings incoming :) > > As an aside to the 'Guiding volunteers' thread, I was talking with Rich > (Bowen) while he was at DevConf this weekend, and we got to thinking > whether it was possible to make a tiny tool that would solve one > specific issue we often come across when someone says "I know X, Y and Z > - What can I do to help Apache?". > > Traditionally, we've said "subscribe to our mailing list (which one?!)" > or "Go look at JIRA/BugZilla", which in itself is fine, but off-putting > to many people as we don't actively use neither MLs or bug trackers to > advertise what we want done, and what tech/person skills would be > helpful where (we're terrible!). Furthermore, it is our > opinion/assessment that bug trackers are not that great from a "skills > -> tasks" perspective. While great for bugs and larger tasks for an > existing audience, they don't provide the right overview or search > features that one could want, and keeping some sort of uniform setup for > these tasks across the ASF is going to be a LOT of work. > > ...If only we had somewhere someone could just go and say "I'm great at > marketing and documentation, what tasks are there that I can do?" and > then get 10 different requests across 6 projects, some that you could > start on right away and some that require more intimate knowledge with > the project. > > ...Or the experienced C/Python programmer that wants to know which tasks > at Apache they could hack on as a good introduction to that project, > while at the same time helping the project accomplish something new. > > ...Oh, and wouldn't it be nifty if we could have a widget we could place > on our web site that lists what we as a project or foundation are > looking for right now in terms of work to be done, so when people visit > our page, they can see that "hey, we're looking for a web dev guru - is > that you?" ? > > Enter 'Help Wanted!'. It's a very small (and very much work-in-progress) > tool that you can use to browse the tasks that all the Apache projects > would like to get done, see the difficulty of it, language (whether > spoken/written or programming) skills needed, what it's about and > who/how to contact. You can also use the HW widget to plug your own > project's requests into your web site, or you can display all the > current tasks waiting in the system across the ASF. 350+ initiatives, > 170+ TLPs, one uniform hub for requests that can help people get started > with Apache. > > The code is "live" at: https://helpwanted.apache.org/ > A test widget is here: https://helpwanted.apache.org/wtest.html > (the test widget shows what it could look like on the httpd site) > > It's open for all committers to go set up new tasks (universal commit > bit, so to speak, just click on 'edit tasks'), and we hope it will be a > hub for putting people on the right path - whether that be a pointer to > JIRA, ML etc - to contributing to our projects. Or it'll crash and burn > and we'll never speak of it again :) > > Contributions, feedback, quality control etc are MOST WELCOME, and we're > only getting started with the proof-of-concept right now (as found in > svn). Hopefully we'll have something stable and polished by the end of > February? :) > > With regards, > Daniel. > > > PS: Yes, I know the admin area is a stylistic nightmare. That'll be > fixed...eventually! And the task guide needs a LOT of work. Saying > "contact the dev list" isn't enough, but I'll need a word smith for that :) > -- -------------------------------------------- MzK "Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending." -- Carl Bard
