Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Paulo Motta
> There is no great hurdle in finding something to work on, it's solely finding someone with the knowledge that can help you work on something and progress it to commit. I agree the primary challenge is to engage existing contributors to mentor newcomers, but this doesn’t preclude having good docu

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Kane Wilson
The main problem, as has always been, is that the big players have a stranglehold on all the committer resources, and bringing in new contributors is not high on their priorities. All that's really required here is that existing committers are directed to spend some non-negligible portion of their

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Lorina Poland
I should chime in and mention that we are in the process of migrating the Contributing/Development sections of the documentation to the site-wide, non-versioned "docs" in cassandra-website, rather than in the docs. That will come into existence when we can get the "new" docs, written in asciidoc, i

Re: [DISCUSSION] Update complexity levels

2021-04-27 Thread Benedict Elliott Smith
FWIW, the goal of this field was to help project planning (both going forwards, and in looking at how we've fared to help project going forwards) more than contributor assignment. There wasn't any expectation that the correct complexity would be provided on triage. I'm not sure how much Jira

Re: [DISCUSSION] Update complexity levels

2021-04-27 Thread David Capwell
+1 as well. One thing to note, many times when i create a ticket i don't know the complexity as I just found a bug (most of the time in a system i do not know); so i tend to default to w/e is in the middle. Leaving the field for someone else to classify feels iffy as we need then someone triaging

[DISCUSSION] Update complexity levels

2021-04-27 Thread Paulo Motta
Branching out the discussion on the complexity levels from the "Attracting new contributors" thread so we don't mix up the topics in the same thread. I personally think that the "complexity" field is more an indicator/hint for inexperienced contributors on whether he will be able to work on a part

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Mick Semb Wever
> Thanks for bringing this important topic for discussion Benjamin. I think > it would help to enumerate what issues we face to attract new contributors > currently and then try to act on those. > > 1. Committers have little bandwidth to review low-impact issues (ie. Low > Hanging Fruit (LHF)), whi

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Patrick McFadin
I have to admit, I like those Duke Nukem levels way more than I should. I guess when you choose "Damn I'm Good" you get the boss fight to end all boss fights. "Benedict has been assigned as a reviewer..." o.O But seriously folks. :D I would advocate for a simple tiering system. Entry Level Inter

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Stefan Miklosovic
Quake has it like - I Can Win - Bring It On - Hurt Me Plenty - Hardcore - Nightmare! On Tue, 27 Apr 2021 at 19:02, Benedict Elliott Smith wrote: > > I think Duke Nuke'em would be more apt > > - Piece of Cake > - Let's Rock > - Come Get Some > - Damn I'm Good > > On 27/04/2021, 17:57, "Patrick M

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Benedict Elliott Smith
I think Duke Nuke'em would be more apt - Piece of Cake - Let's Rock - Come Get Some - Damn I'm Good On 27/04/2021, 17:57, "Patrick McFadin" wrote: Could always go with Doom difficulty levels: - I'm Too Young to Die - Easy. - Hurt Me Plenty - Normal. - Ultra-Violence

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Patrick McFadin
Could always go with Doom difficulty levels: - I'm Too Young to Die - Easy. - Hurt Me Plenty - Normal. - Ultra-Violence - Hard. - Nightmare - Very Hard. - On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 9:50 AM Benedict Elliott Smith wrote: > Perhaps we could replace both Complexity and Difficulty wit

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Benedict Elliott Smith
Perhaps we could replace both Complexity and Difficulty with e.g. Experience? Newcomer Learner Contributor Experienced Veteran I'm not sure I like it. I don't really like segregating the community into buckets like this. But it is perhaps more intuitive than complexity, while encoding a more ob

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Patrick McFadin
Hi everyone. Jumping in because I love this topic. Thank you for starting it, Benjamin. The thread is about attracting new contributors, but the direction this has taken seems to be more along the line of how to attract code contributors. We list a lot of contributions that have nothing to do with

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Paulo Motta
I (wrongly) assumed this proposal would be fairly uncontroversial so I brought up within this related thread but given there is some divergence, I retract the suggestion for now and will bring it on its own thread later so we don't go too far away from the original, and more important, topic which

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Benedict Elliott Smith
What you are describing to me are difficulty levels, whereas this field tries to measure complexity. The difference is that while both are subjective, difficulty is relatively more so. This may lead people to assign difficulty based on their own perception (which is very subjective), rather than

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Paulo Motta
Thanks for bringing the definitions and historical context Benedict. Agreed to not attach difficulties to time to complete a task. The fact that the complexity types need explanation or reading documentation is precisely the issue I’m trying to solve by using more straightforward and unambiguous t

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Benedict Elliott Smith
If you're wondering, they're documented: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CASSANDRA/JIRA+Workflow+Proposals Impossible was introduced to take the place of "pony" - which was genuinely deployed on occasion, but I agree it's redundant as nobody proposes things like that anymore. Chall

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Brandon Williams
On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 9:32 AM Paulo Motta wrote: > > I propose the following levels instead: > * Low Hanging Fruit (I think we should even rename this to "Beginner", > since the LHF term is not very well known by outsiders and non-native > English speakers) : easy tasks for who never contributed

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Paulo Motta
Since this is a related topic, I'd like to open a small parenthesis to throw out a proposal for improving the semantics of our JIRA "complexity" field, which currently has the following levels: * Low Hanging Fruit (overall easy tasks for new or existing contributors) * Normal (? this is the most mi

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Joshua McKenzie
Updating the boot camp material for 4.0 and having it integrated in with the official docs (https://cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest/development/) would likely be a valuable, if expensive, exercise. Think this is the slideshare link from the 2014 boot camp; could build off this as the bones are sti

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Paulo Motta
Bootcamp is a great effort, but I think in terms of priority ensuring that LHF tickets are properly described (well scoped, good ticket description etc) and given proper attention and mentorship to ensure it goes through the finish line is a great first step and will significantly reduce the barrie

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Benjamin Lerer
> > It really boils down just to a simple "problem" to have enough > committers to look at it over a (preferably) shorter period of time > and make that feedback loop shorter. > The review delay is a clear issue. A part of the problem is that most committers are pretty busy (or that there are not

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Paulo Motta
+1, I had a few minor patches before but the bootcamp definitely helped me ramp up on the project faster and I found the recorded material very useful during project onboarding (some of it is still available on Youtube). I think it would be beneficial to collocate a bootcamp for new contributors t

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Jeremy Hanna
I believe Paolo started with the project through a contributor boot camp. Also if I remember correctly some of the ones that were done were internal at DataStax and it helped some people get familiar with the project who still contribute today. Also this would be short recorded introductions s

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Stefan Miklosovic
By the way, I would maybe create some kind of a list of people and Cassandra subsystems they are the most familiar with so if there is some problem with some area, that person (persons) would be kind of a primary contact to go to. I know it is maybe silly to ask to categorise it like that but they

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Stefan Miklosovic
On Tue, 27 Apr 2021 at 14:41, Benedict Elliott Smith wrote: > > I agree, and have said as much in the past. We have limited options for > improving this, though. I've proposed in the past a rotating role for > contributors to respond to Jira comments, but even once a committer is > involved the

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Benedict Elliott Smith
I agree, and have said as much in the past. We have limited options for improving this, though. I've proposed in the past a rotating role for contributors to respond to Jira comments, but even once a committer is involved their other commitments may make feedback rounds take a long time. Howeve

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Stefan Miklosovic
It really boils down just to a simple "problem" to have enough committers to look at it over a (preferably) shorter period of time and make that feedback loop shorter. That's it. You might have the best guides and whatever but if a dust settles at it no guide will make it happen. On Tue, 27 Apr 20

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Benedict Elliott Smith
I think that all of the bootcamps we ran in the past produced precisely zero new contributors. I wonder if it would be more impactful to produce slightly more permanent content, such as step-by-step guides to producing a simple patch for some subsystem. Perhaps if people want to, a recording co

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Manish G
Contributor bootcamps can really help new people like me. On Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 5:08 PM Jeremy Hanna wrote: > One thing we've done in the past is contributor bootcamps along with the > the new contributor guide and the LHF complexity tickets. Unfortunately, I > don't know that the contributor b

Re: [DISCUSSION] Attracting new contributors

2021-04-27 Thread Jeremy Hanna
One thing we've done in the past is contributor bootcamps along with the the new contributor guide and the LHF complexity tickets. Unfortunately, I don't know that the contributor bootcamps were ever recorded. Presentations were done to introduce people to the codebase generally (I think Gary