[openstack-dev] Encouraging first-time contributors through bug tags/reviews

sean roberts seanroberts66 at gmail.com
Mon Nov 30 15:57:54 UTC 2015


How about:
First timers assign a bug to a mentor and the mentor takes responsibility
for the first timer learning from the bug to completion.

Per project, a few people volunteer themselves as mentors. As easy as
responding to [project][mentor] emails.

On Monday, November 30, 2015, Sean Dague <sean at dague.net> wrote:

> On 11/25/2015 03:22 PM, Shamail wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >> On Nov 25, 2015, at 11:05 PM, Doug Hellmann <doug at doughellmann.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >>
> >> Excerpts from Shamail Tahir's message of 2015-11-25 09:15:54 -0500:
> >>> Hi everyone,
> >>>
> >>> Andrew Mitry recently shared a medium post[1] by Kent C. Dobbs which
> >>> discusses how one open-source project is encouraging contributions by
> new
> >>> open-source contributors through a combination of a special tag (which
> is
> >>> associated with work that is needed but can only be completed by
> someone
> >>> who is a first-time contributor) and helpful comments in the review
> phase
> >>> to ensure the contribution(s) eventually get merged.
> >>>
> >>> While reading the article, I immediately thought about our
> >>> low-hanging-fruit bug tag which is used for a very similar purpose in
> "bug
> >>> fixing" section of  the "how to contribute" page[2].  The
> low-hanging-fruit
> >>> tag is used to identify items that are generally suitable for
> first-time or
> >>> beginner contributors but, in reality, anyone can pick them up.
> >>>
> >>> I wanted to propose a new tag (or even changing the, existing,
> low-hanging
> >>> fruit tag) that would identify items that we are reserving for
> first-time
> >>> OpenStack contributors (e.g. a patch-set for the item submitted by
> someone
> >>> who is not a first time contributor would be rejected)... The same
> article
> >>> that Andrew shared mentions using an "up-for-grabs" tag which also
> >>> populates the items at up-for-grabs[3] (a site where people looking to
> >>> start working on open-source projects see entry-level items from
> multiple
> >>> projects).  If we move forward with an exclusive tag for first-timers
> then
> >>> it would be nice if we could use the up-for-grabs tag so that OpenStack
> >>> also shows up on the list too.  Please let me know if this change
> should be
> >>> proposed elsewhere, the tags are maintained in launchpad and the wiki I
> >>> found related to bug tags[4] didn't indicate a procedure for
> submitting a
> >>> change proposal.
> >>
> >> I like the idea of making bugs suitable for first-timers more
> >> discoverable. I'm not sure we need to *reserve* any bugs for any class
> >> of contributor. What benefit do you think that provides?
> > I would have to defer to additional feedback here...
> >
> > My own perspective from when I was doing my first contribution is that
> it was hard to find active "low-hanging-fruit" items.  Most were already
> work-in-progress or assigned.
>
> This was a direct consequence of us dropping the auto-abandoning of old
> code reviews in gerrit. When a review is abandoned the bug is flipped
> back to New instead of In Progress.
>
> I found quite often people go and gobble up bugs assigning them to
> themselves, but don't make real progress on them. Then new contributors
> show up, and don't work on any of those issues because our tools say
> someone is already on top of it.
>
>         -Sean
>
> --
> Sean Dague
> http://dague.net
>
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-- 
~sean
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