Self Introductions (was Re: Welcome)

[Karsten Wade]

On Wed, 2006-01-18 at 17:30 +0530, Gaurav wrote:
>  why o why this self introduction is
>  needed ...........................as if one is applying for a job or
>  something ..........i never seen on OSS project this kind of rigid
>  introduction schemes ..... 
We inherited the practice from Fedora developers.  People who want to
contribute actively on fedora-devel-list were (are?) asked to do a self-
intro.

This was done at the start of the Fedora Project because it was a
_very_active_ community of Red Hat Linux enthusiasts working together
for the first time with many new faces.  It allowed people to sort out
who was who.

Otherwise, I agree with what Rahul and Tommy have written.  It is in
fact a very small hurdle that helps us know who people are.

>  your past qualifications or  some white collar job is no guarantee
>  against quality or the talent ...i have seen enough 16 years old or
>  hackers with no higher education code writing the best code .. .the
>  content or the code submitted should be only concern 
There is no judgment of qualifications, specific or implied.

If you see *any* language in the self-intro page[1] that seems to judge
you by your qualifications, please let us know or make fixes yourself on
the Wiki.

As a person whose qualifications are often _less_ than the newbies
around me, I am by no means intending the project to judge incoming
contributors negatively by their qualifications.

Knowing what you have done and how you assess yourself is important in
knowing how to help you be successful in the project.

It also serves to make _everyone_ accountable, be they from Red Hat or
not.  We all know everyone else is.  That's why we post a page with
links[2] to all of the self-intros that have been done on this list, so
we are easy to find.

Thanks for your question and concerns.

- Karsten
[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/SelfIntroduction
[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/Contributors
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
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