Discussion - issues with Fedora Join - solutions/ideas and TODOs?

[Ankur Sinha]

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Hiya,

Before I begin, if you're a member of the Fedora community already,
please apply for membership to the fedora-join group in FAS[1].
(That'll give us an idea of how many community members are interested
in the SIG.) If you are a newbie and haven't introduced yourself yet,
please do so. 

It's a somewhat long e-mail, but please bear with me and skim through
it. I encourage *everyone* to reply to this e-mail with ideas/comments!

Background and aim of this group
- ---------------------------------

For years now, we've heard that new potential contributors (henceforth
referred to as "newbies") have a hard time joining the community. The
reasons for this include, but are not limited to:

- - newbies are timid (think squirrels!)
- - newbies aren't used to the open source way of self education (Google
the hell out of things, RTFM attitude, shamelessly ask questions if
needed,  NO spoon feeding and so on)
- - newbies lose interest if they don't make friends and integrate into
the community in a few weeks (few days?).
- - the community is *vast*, spread over different teams with their own
systems and procedures, and for someone new, finding the right
people/channels/procedures can be quite daunting.
- - community members are usually quite busy to give detailed replies -
we're all volunteers here.
- - more?

So the idea of setting up the SIG was to set up channels of
communication where newbies can come and in an extremely friendly
environment form relationships within themselves, and with the
community. 

For this to work, we need:

- - the infrastructure. We have:
* #fedora-join
* this mailing list
- - community members hanging out in these channels and willing to speak
to newbies, help them get in touch with the right people, help them
find the right resources, and so on.
- - newbies.

I hope this makes sense to everyone? Does everyone agree that the idea
is a sane one? Any tweaks?

How are we doing?
- ------------------

Well, not too good, I'd say. We've helped out some folks in the past,
but we're not as active as we should be. Ideally, we should be up to
our ears in e-mails and questions and people. So why aren't we? 

- - Part of this is of course because we're busy with other things; 
- - Part of this is also because we haven't managed to gain enough
traction to get more members of the community involved in helping out
at the group. 
- - I'm not sure the entire community is aware of the existence of the
channels we've set up
- - I'm not sure if we are visible enough for newbies to find us (for
example, we're not on whatcanidoforfedora.org)

Other related reasons:
- - we don't meet often (but do we need regular IRC meetings?)

What can we do?
- ---------------

Now, this is the interesting bit! What do we do to improve the current
state? Events (physical/IRC), make more noise, turn up in the right
places, make ourselves more visible? 

Off the top of my head:
- - We should make more noise to inform the community that we're here to
help newbies get started
- - I think we need to be better organised. For example, we don't have a
SOP document (standard operating procedure) to guide either newbies or
contributors to this group. Maybe we can set up a pagure repo where we
open a new ticket for each newbie, and then close it when the newbie's
integrated nicely with the community?
- - We need to embrace metrics too - how many newbies do we have on this
list? How many have we helped? Maybe we can set up a feedback form and
request newbies to fill it out when they're ready? How many
contributors do we have on this list? How often do people refer newbies
to our channels?
- - We need to integrate better with the community - we seem to be a
standalone group at the moment, and that just won't work. Maybe we
could integrate with CommOps better, since CommOps has members from the
different teams?
- - Maybe an IRC meeting a month just to keep ourselves active wouldn't
be such a bad idea?
- - The fas group is only for community members, do we need another for
newbies? Should we just open the group to newbies? (This can then be
used to give them wiki access which has been limited to cla+1 to deal
with spam.)
- - What else?


Please, add to this list!


Other stuff
- ------------

Please do keep up with the Fedora hubs initiative[2]. It's going to be
marvellous! It also has some functionality to enable people to join
groups, but I still don't think it's a complete replacement for good
old school conversation when it comes to forming relationships.


Please, do reply to this e-mail with whatever ideas you have - we can't
improve things without ideas and discussion.

I'm still drowning in work, but when I do have time off (like this long
weekend!), I'm going to be active. Most of you know that I lurk in a
lot of fedora channels as FranciscoD, please feel free to ping me.

[1] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/group/view/fedora-join
[2] https://fedoramagazine.org/5tftw-2015-06-19/
- -- 
Thanks,
Regards,
Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
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[Cory Hilliard]

OK here's a reply,

One thing that I've been frustrated with is having to search for 
solutions on how to contribute.  I want to contribute.  I've been a 
"newbie" for a couple of years now, because I've never had a simple door 
to walk through.  No, I'm not looking to be spoon-fed, I'm looking for 
an easier to understand way of walking through the front door.  I would 
love to help with package maintenance, but I need some kind of tutorial 
on how to build RPM packages.  I asked this question years ago and was 
told there was one being built, but it never seemed to happen.

Basically what it boils down to is this:  There is a HUGE cavern between 
someone that wants to help, be it code, comments, contributions and 
actually doing it.  I've been to all the contribution sites and all the 
clicks, but there still isn't some simple way for people to help out.  
For me I would love to help with code or graphics or making things 
easier for end users to use Fedora, but all of the gates I have to pass 
are difficult to find and I end up giving up after a couple of hours.

The systems in place are confusing and there are no simple instructions 
on how to use them.  It's self-defeating in many ways.  I want to help, 
but I can't help because I don't know how to use any of the systems.  
I'm in my last semester of a computer engineering course and I haven't 
had the time necessary to learn your processes, so after an hour I end 
up discouraged and just give up.  Not because I don't want to help, I 
just don't have the time to figure it out on my own right now.

Fedora, and most open source projects that I've found seem to have the 
same problems.  There is 1000 ways to do everything, none of them are 
easy to understand.  It's overwhelming.


On 29/08/16 12:16 PM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
>  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>  Hash: SHA256
>
>  Hiya,
>
>  Before I begin, if you're a member of the Fedora community already,
>  please apply for membership to the fedora-join group in FAS[1].
>  (That'll give us an idea of how many community members are interested
>  in the SIG.) If you are a newbie and haven't introduced yourself yet,
>  please do so.
>
>  It's a somewhat long e-mail, but please bear with me and skim through
>  it. I encourage *everyone* to reply to this e-mail with ideas/comments!
>
>  Background and aim of this group
>  - ---------------------------------
>
>  For years now, we've heard that new potential contributors (henceforth
>  referred to as "newbies") have a hard time joining the community. The
>  reasons for this include, but are not limited to:
>
>  - - newbies are timid (think squirrels!)
>  - - newbies aren't used to the open source way of self education (Google
>  the hell out of things, RTFM attitude, shamelessly ask questions if
>  needed,  NO spoon feeding and so on)
>  - - newbies lose interest if they don't make friends and integrate into
>  the community in a few weeks (few days?).
>  - - the community is *vast*, spread over different teams with their own
>  systems and procedures, and for someone new, finding the right
>  people/channels/procedures can be quite daunting.
>  - - community members are usually quite busy to give detailed replies -
>  we're all volunteers here.
>  - - more?
>
>  So the idea of setting up the SIG was to set up channels of
>  communication where newbies can come and in an extremely friendly
>  environment form relationships within themselves, and with the
>  community.
>
>  For this to work, we need:
>
>  - - the infrastructure. We have:
>  * #fedora-join
>  * this mailing list
>  - - community members hanging out in these channels and willing to speak
>  to newbies, help them get in touch with the right people, help them
>  find the right resources, and so on.
>  - - newbies.
>
>  I hope this makes sense to everyone? Does everyone agree that the idea
>  is a sane one? Any tweaks?
>
>  How are we doing?
>  - ------------------
>
>  Well, not too good, I'd say. We've helped out some folks in the past,
>  but we're not as active as we should be. Ideally, we should be up to
>  our ears in e-mails and questions and people. So why aren't we?
>
>  - - Part of this is of course because we're busy with other things;
>  - - Part of this is also because we haven't managed to gain enough
>  traction to get more members of the community involved in helping out
>  at the group.
>  - - I'm not sure the entire community is aware of the existence of the
>  channels we've set up
>  - - I'm not sure if we are visible enough for newbies to find us (for
>  example, we're not on whatcanidoforfedora.org)
>
>  Other related reasons:
>  - - we don't meet often (but do we need regular IRC meetings?)
>
>  What can we do?
>  - ---------------
>
>  Now, this is the interesting bit! What do we do to improve the current
>  state? Events (physical/IRC), make more noise, turn up in the right
>  places, make ourselves more visible?
>
>  Off the top of my head:
>  - - We should make more noise to inform the community that we're here to
>  help newbies get started
>  - - I think we need to be better organised. For example, we don't have a
>  SOP document (standard operating procedure) to guide either newbies or
>  contributors to this group. Maybe we can set up a pagure repo where we
>  open a new ticket for each newbie, and then close it when the newbie's
>  integrated nicely with the community?
>  - - We need to embrace metrics too - how many newbies do we have on this
>  list? How many have we helped? Maybe we can set up a feedback form and
>  request newbies to fill it out when they're ready? How many
>  contributors do we have on this list? How often do people refer newbies
>  to our channels?
>  - - We need to integrate better with the community - we seem to be a
>  standalone group at the moment, and that just won't work. Maybe we
>  could integrate with CommOps better, since CommOps has members from the
>  different teams?
>  - - Maybe an IRC meeting a month just to keep ourselves active wouldn't
>  be such a bad idea?
>  - - The fas group is only for community members, do we need another for
>  newbies? Should we just open the group to newbies? (This can then be
>  used to give them wiki access which has been limited to cla+1 to deal
>  with spam.)
>  - - What else?
>
>
>  Please, add to this list!
>
>
>  Other stuff
>  - ------------
>
>  Please do keep up with the Fedora hubs initiative[2]. It's going to be
>  marvellous! It also has some functionality to enable people to join
>  groups, but I still don't think it's a complete replacement for good
>  old school conversation when it comes to forming relationships.
>
>
>  Please, do reply to this e-mail with whatever ideas you have - we can't
>  improve things without ideas and discussion.
>
>  I'm still drowning in work, but when I do have time off (like this long
>  weekend!), I'm going to be active. Most of you know that I lurk in a
>  lot of fedora channels as FranciscoD, please feel free to ping me.
>
>  [1] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/group/view/fedora-join
>  [2] https://fedoramagazine.org/5tftw-2015-06-19/
>  - -- 
>  Thanks,
>  Regards,
>  Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"
>
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
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> >  -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- 
>  _______________________________________________
>  fedora-join mailing list
>  fedora-join(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/[e-mail]...

[Ankur Sinha]

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Hash: SHA256

<snip>
>  Fedora, and most open source projects that I've found seem to
> have
>  the same problems.  There is 1000 ways to do everything, none of them
>  are easy to understand.  It's overwhelming. 
So I think I understand what you're saying. It boils down to different
teams doing things in different ways. I don't see a way around this -
processes can be optimised, but with the number of teams we have, it is
quite difficult to make everyone follow the same system - simply
because there isn't any one system that fits all.

For example, package maintainers and design cannot follow the same
system, it just won't work.

What we can do is make it simpler to find and follow the process. I've
been speaking to folks involved in the hubs initiative, and they do
have a plan to include a step by step widget system to help people join
new teams and function in those teams. Hopefully that should alleviate
the issue somewhat.

Can you tell me some specific instances that have made it hard for you?
It's much easier to discuss things with the people involved if I have
actual cases to put forward.
- -- 
Thanks,
Regards,
Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
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[Cory Hilliard]

OK, well for example, if I want to be a package maintainer:

I need to learn how to create RPMs.  That process in itself is pretty 
difficult to jump into when you have no clue what those insanely long 
and wordy documents mean.

You need to learn bohdi https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org again, what am I 
supposed to do with all that?

I understand that these tools are important for maintaining a secure 
structure for tracking updates and such, but then there's git and 
whatever else is going on.

I'm in my last semester of the engineering/science course I'm taking.  I 
know about 7 languages and I'm pretty good at coding now, but all these 
systems aren't taught anywhere.  I've used git in basic ways, but still 
feel a little newbieish with it.  All of these processes are not 
intuitive, overwhelming and difficult to jump into.  ...and this is for 
only package maintainers.   I'm sure there are similar things to learn 
in every specific thing you want to contribute to.

Where is there a simple walk-through or basic points needed to 
understand all this stuff?  I want to contribute, but I really don't 
want to look like a complete moron trying to muck about with all these 
tools.  As awesome as the fedora community is, I don't want to look like 
an idiot because I did something wrong.  I'm not stupid.  I'm just new 
at all this.

So it boils down to the same issue I've had for 2 years now.  I want to 
contribute, but I don't know how.  I've joined this group, but there 
isn't a single thing that this group has offered that explains these 
steps or pointed me to a simple walk-through.

Trust me, if I had figured it out, I would have written one.  I love 
helping people overcome hurtles.  This hurtle is big and scary and 
overwhelming and I don't have time to learn it all with all my studies.  
Maybe in December, I could, but I would probably already be contributing 
if there was already a teaching tool that was simple to understand and 
implement.

I hope this helps,

-Cory



On 30/08/16 06:09 PM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
>  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>  Hash: SHA256
>
>  <snip>
> > Fedora, and most open source projects that I've found seem to have
> > the same problems.  There is 1000 ways to do everything, none of them
> > are easy to understand.  It's overwhelming.
>  So I think I understand what you're saying. It boils down to different
>  teams doing things in different ways. I don't see a way around this -
>  processes can be optimised, but with the number of teams we have, it is
>  quite difficult to make everyone follow the same system - simply
>  because there isn't any one system that fits all.
>
>  For example, package maintainers and design cannot follow the same
>  system, it just won't work.
>
>  What we can do is make it simpler to find and follow the process. I've
>  been speaking to folks involved in the hubs initiative, and they do
>  have a plan to include a step by step widget system to help people join
>  new teams and function in those teams. Hopefully that should alleviate
>  the issue somewhat.
>
>  Can you tell me some specific instances that have made it hard for you?
>  It's much easier to discuss things with the people involved if I have
>  actual cases to put forward.
>  - -- 
>  Thanks,
>  Regards,
>  Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"
>
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
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> >  -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- 
>  _______________________________________________
>  fedora-join mailing list
>  fedora-join(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/[e-mail]...

[Ankur Sinha]

OK, so in your specific case, the issue is neither the lack of
documentation, nor the lack of tooling. It the required learning curve
that needs to be navigated - and this cannot be shrunk down in case of
something as important as package maintenance. I've explained inline
below:

On Wed, 2016-08-31 at 10:31 -0400, Cory Hilliard wrote:
>  OK, well for example, if I want to be a package maintainer:
>  I need to learn how to create RPMs.  That process in itself is pretty
>  difficult to jump into when you have no clue what those insanely long
>  and wordy documents mean. 
Well, you don't need to understand what everything in the document
means. You pick up one part of it that's relevant to what you're doing
at the moment, and focus on this part. For example, in 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_maintainers

you start with a bugzilla account, then a fedora account, then mailing
lists and so on.

>  You need to learn bohdi https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org again, what
>  am I supposed to do with all that? 
I don't really understand this - learn how to use bodhi you mean? Have
you reached this stage - it's a one page form with 4-5 fields, and a
submit button :(

>  I understand that these tools are important for maintaining a secure
>  structure for tracking updates and such, but then there's git and
>  whatever else is going on. 
>  I'm in my last semester of the engineering/science course
> I'm
>  taking.  I know about 7 languages and I'm pretty good at coding now,
>  but all these systems aren't taught anywhere.  I've used git in basic
>  ways, but still feel a little newbieish with it.  
Unfortunately, there aren't too many universities that teach version
control - they'll teach "software development", sure, but they won't
teach version control. I wasn't taught it at university either - but
that's the difference between school courses and open source - in
school courses, they decide what can be taught in that limited period
of time irrespective of whether or not students will use this stuff; in
open source, you teach yourself what you *need* as the need arises. 


Yesterday, I was tinkering with html/css/js/jquery/bootstrap to make
this:
http://ankursinha.fedorapeople.org/charlie/ - it took me a few hours of
googling to get the hang of it but now I think I know how it works.

Today I'm tinkering with Inkscape and I have no clue how to do things.
I google when I get stuck and then move to the next phase. 

>   All of these processes are not intuitive, overwhelming and
> difficult
>  to jump into.  ...and this is for only package maintainers.   I'm
>  sure there are similar things to learn in every specific thing you
>  want to contribute to. 
OK, no one can really teach you how to use tools. Even if you had a
mentor, he could not teach you how to use git, or inkscape, or GIMP -
you'll have to learn these yourself by using them, I'm afraid. If you
do have a specific "how do I do this in git?" question, we can help
you, yes - but then you'll probably find the answer on stackoverflow
already :D 

>  Where is there a simple walk-through or basic points needed to
>  understand all this stuff?  
So, in software development, git is pretty much everywhere - it's why
it was chosen - because it's so common that most people that write any
code will have spent the time to learn it. There are thousands of walk
throughs - you can't expect any community to maintain documentation for
ubiquitous tools, can you? :(

>   I want to contribute, but I really don't want to look like a
>  complete moron trying to muck about with all these tools.  As awesome
>  as the fedora community is, I don't want to look like an idiot
>  because I did something wrong.   
I'm most interested in this. Why do you feel you'd "look like an
idiot"? Have you seen this happen to someone? Have you gotten the
impression from somewhere that people will be offended if you make a
mistake? I've made massive blunders in my time here, and all I do is
find someone who knows more and ask them to help - no one has ever made
me feel stupid. You shouldn't be thinking like this in an open source
community - in any open source community. 

Did you know that we get shiny badges for failed package builds??
https://badges.fedoraproject.org/badge/what-goes-up...-koji-failure-i

You'll have to be more careful in that high paying corporate job you're
eyeing, though ;)

>  I'm not stupid.  I'm just new at all this. 
And everyone was new to all this - even our kernel developers! You're
not the first one to face a new tool - that's just a necessary step
everyone takes. 

>  So it boils down to the same issue I've had for 2 years now.  I
> want
>  to contribute, but I don't know how.  
Actually you do - in your case, you seem to be looking for an "easy
way" out, and like in the case of Maths, there isn't one - you just
have to trudge along and learn.

>   I've joined this group, but there isn't a single thing that
> this
>  group has offered that explains these steps or pointed me to a simple
>  walk-through. 
If you're still referring to git, google "git for beginners" - there's
a whole book, stackoverflow, blog posts. Anyone you ask about git will
ask you to do the same - it really is everywhere. Someone with a sense
of humour may even give you a lmgtfy link!

>  Trust me, if I had figured it out, I would have written one.  
>  I love helping people overcome hurtles.  This hurtle is big and scary
>  and overwhelming and I don't have time to learn it all with all my
>  studies.   
See, time management is a different issue - we have lots of volunteers
who struggle to continue contributing. I'm doing my PhD, and if you
think coursework is time consuming, you really haven't an idea ;) I
tend to go MIA for weeks sometimes when I'm bogged down with my
research work - there isn't much that can be done - we all have our
priorities, and we all have lives outside of Fedora :)

>  Maybe in December, I could, but I would probably already be
>  contributing if there was already a teaching tool that was simple to
>  understand and implement.
>  I hope this helps, 
It does. From everything that you've written, I get the feeling you're
looking to get started rather quickly, and not being able to do so is
annoying you somewhat. It doesn't work that way. You've studied
programming languages - did you learn the first one in a day? No - it
takes time and practice. That's quite common to most of software
development, whether it's coding the software, testing it, deploying
it, building it, whatever.

So, I'd suggest you give it *one* more try, but this time, you go step
by step. Build an rpm first, get it to work, and then worry about the
rest of the process - there is no point learning how to push an update
if you don't have an rpm, right? Ping me if you get stuck - IRC or even
via e-mail, and I'll be happy to help out.
-- 
Thanks,
Regards,
Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha

[Cory Hilliard]

Thank you for your reply.  Some of this information I already knew... 
but the question that was asked, "Can you tell me some specific 
instances that have made it hard for you?".

That was the question I was replying to.  The issue is that there are no 
simple tools or walk-throughs.  Learning all this stuff takes a lot of 
time and focus.  Time and focus I can't give right now due to my 
studies.  I consume myself in what I am learning, because, as you know, 
teaching institutions do not teach.  They are MacDonald's.  5 Billion 
served.  It processes as many students as it can to make a profit.  You 
end up with a grade at the end that probably doesn't reflect any actual 
learning, but rather how well you can jump through hoops and provide 
something that appeases the gods of your school.

I'm not looking for an easy way out.  I just don't know the process and 
there aren't very many "You are here" maps to get you though to where 
you want to go.

When I'm done in December, I would be thrilled to make a map like this.  
I just need to have the free time to do so.

Thanks,

-Cory


On 31/08/16 01:22 PM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
>  OK, so in your specific case, the issue is neither the lack of
>  documentation, nor the lack of tooling. It the required learning curve
>  that needs to be navigated - and this cannot be shrunk down in case of
>  something as important as package maintenance. I've explained inline
>  below:
>
>  On Wed, 2016-08-31 at 10:31 -0400, Cory Hilliard wrote:
> > OK, well for example, if I want to be a package maintainer:
> > I need to learn how to create RPMs.  That process in itself is pretty
> > difficult to jump into when you have no clue what those insanely long
> > and wordy documents mean.
>  Well, you don't need to understand what everything in the document
>  means. You pick up one part of it that's relevant to what you're doing
>  at the moment, and focus on this part. For example, in
>  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_maintainers
>
>  you start with a bugzilla account, then a fedora account, then mailing
>  lists and so on.
>
> > You need to learn bohdi https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org again, what
> > am I supposed to do with all that?
>  I don't really understand this - learn how to use bodhi you mean? Have
>  you reached this stage - it's a one page form with 4-5 fields, and a
>  submit button :(
>
> > I understand that these tools are important for maintaining a secure
> > structure for tracking updates and such, but then there's git and
> > whatever else is going on.
> > I'm in my last semester of the engineering/science course I'm
> > taking.  I know about 7 languages and I'm pretty good at coding now,
> > but all these systems aren't taught anywhere.  I've used git in basic
> > ways, but still feel a little newbieish with it.
>  Unfortunately, there aren't too many universities that teach version
>  control - they'll teach "software development", sure, but they won't
>  teach version control. I wasn't taught it at university either - but
>  that's the difference between school courses and open source - in
>  school courses, they decide what can be taught in that limited period
>  of time irrespective of whether or not students will use this stuff; in
>  open source, you teach yourself what you *need* as the need arises.
>
>
>  Yesterday, I was tinkering with html/css/js/jquery/bootstrap to make
>  this:
>  http://ankursinha.fedorapeople.org/charlie/ - it took me a few hours of
>  googling to get the hang of it but now I think I know how it works.
>
>  Today I'm tinkering with Inkscape and I have no clue how to do things.
>  I google when I get stuck and then move to the next phase.
>
> >   All of these processes are not intuitive, overwhelming and difficult
> > to jump into.  ...and this is for only package maintainers.   I'm
> > sure there are similar things to learn in every specific thing you
> > want to contribute to.
>  OK, no one can really teach you how to use tools. Even if you had a
>  mentor, he could not teach you how to use git, or inkscape, or GIMP -
>  you'll have to learn these yourself by using them, I'm afraid. If you
>  do have a specific "how do I do this in git?" question, we can help
>  you, yes - but then you'll probably find the answer on stackoverflow
>  already :D
>
> > Where is there a simple walk-through or basic points needed to
> > understand all this stuff?
>  So, in software development, git is pretty much everywhere - it's why
>  it was chosen - because it's so common that most people that write any
>  code will have spent the time to learn it. There are thousands of walk
>  throughs - you can't expect any community to maintain documentation for
>  ubiquitous tools, can you? :(
>
> >   I want to contribute, but I really don't want to look like a
> > complete moron trying to muck about with all these tools.  As awesome
> > as the fedora community is, I don't want to look like an idiot
> > because I did something wrong.
>  I'm most interested in this. Why do you feel you'd "look like an
>  idiot"? Have you seen this happen to someone? Have you gotten the
>  impression from somewhere that people will be offended if you make a
>  mistake? I've made massive blunders in my time here, and all I do is
>  find someone who knows more and ask them to help - no one has ever made
>  me feel stupid. You shouldn't be thinking like this in an open source
>  community - in any open source community.
>
>  Did you know that we get shiny badges for failed package builds??
>  https://badges.fedoraproject.org/badge/what-goes-up...-koji-failure-i
>
>  You'll have to be more careful in that high paying corporate job you're
>  eyeing, though ;)
>
> > I'm not stupid.  I'm just new at all this.
>  And everyone was new to all this - even our kernel developers! You're
>  not the first one to face a new tool - that's just a necessary step
>  everyone takes.
>
> > So it boils down to the same issue I've had for 2 years now.  I want
> > to contribute, but I don't know how.
>  Actually you do - in your case, you seem to be looking for an "easy
>  way" out, and like in the case of Maths, there isn't one - you just
>  have to trudge along and learn.
>
> >   I've joined this group, but there isn't a single thing that this
> > group has offered that explains these steps or pointed me to a simple
> > walk-through.
>  If you're still referring to git, google "git for beginners" - there's
>  a whole book, stackoverflow, blog posts. Anyone you ask about git will
>  ask you to do the same - it really is everywhere. Someone with a sense
>  of humour may even give you a lmgtfy link!
>
> > Trust me, if I had figured it out, I would have written one.
> > I love helping people overcome hurtles.  This hurtle is big and scary
> > and overwhelming and I don't have time to learn it all with all my
> > studies.
>  See, time management is a different issue - we have lots of volunteers
>  who struggle to continue contributing. I'm doing my PhD, and if you
>  think coursework is time consuming, you really haven't an idea ;) I
>  tend to go MIA for weeks sometimes when I'm bogged down with my
>  research work - there isn't much that can be done - we all have our
>  priorities, and we all have lives outside of Fedora :)
>
> > Maybe in December, I could, but I would probably already be
> > contributing if there was already a teaching tool that was simple to
> > understand and implement.
> > I hope this helps,
>  It does. From everything that you've written, I get the feeling you're
>  looking to get started rather quickly, and not being able to do so is
>  annoying you somewhat. It doesn't work that way. You've studied
>  programming languages - did you learn the first one in a day? No - it
>  takes time and practice. That's quite common to most of software
>  development, whether it's coding the software, testing it, deploying
>  it, building it, whatever.
>
>  So, I'd suggest you give it *one* more try, but this time, you go step
>  by step. Build an rpm first, get it to work, and then worry about the
>  rest of the process - there is no point learning how to push an update
>  if you don't have an rpm, right? Ping me if you get stuck - IRC or even
>  via e-mail, and I'll be happy to help out.
>
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  fedora-join mailing list
>  fedora-join(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/[e-mail]...

[Ankur Sinha]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

On Wed, 2016-08-31 at 13:40 -0400, Cory Hilliard wrote:
>  Thank you for your reply.  Some of this information I already
> knew...
>  but the question that was asked, "Can you tell me some specific
>  instances that have made it hard for you?". 
Thanks for the reply - all of this helps us understand what potential
contributors go through. I'm still thinking of how we can make the
technology we use more accessible, but it'll take time since a lot of
it is not fedora specific tech.

>  That was the question I was replying to.  The issue is that there
> are
>  no simple tools or walk-throughs.  Learning all this stuff takes a
>  lot of time and focus.  Time and focus I can't give right now due to
>  my studies.  I consume myself in what I am learning, because, as you
>  know, teaching institutions do not teach.  They are MacDonald's.  5
>  Billion served.  It processes as many students as it can to make a
>  profit.  You end up with a grade at the end that probably doesn't
>  reflect any actual learning, but rather how well you can jump through
>  hoops and provide something that appeases the gods of your school. 
It's completely understandable - your academics are first priority. We
say this to all students that attempt contributions :)

>  I'm not looking for an easy way out.  I just don't know the
> process
>  and there aren't very many "You are here" maps to get you though to
>  where you want to go. 
By "easy way", I meant more a "short cut" really - a way where you
could learn these things in a short amount of time. That, in my
experience won't happen - the processes and tools take some time to
master. Even now, you'll meet advanced developers that don't know
everything about git - they just know where to look. It's a skill you
learn from experience. 


>  When I'm done in December, I would be thrilled to make a map
> like
>  this.  I just need to have the free time to do so. 
That'll be awesome. Like I said, don't worry about it too much - you
have plenty of time, and you don't need to begin with *massive*
contributions. Start small - when I'd begun, I'd first packaged fonts -
there's very little building and there are templates for everything.
That helped me understand the processes since I had to only learn the
bare minimum about the tooling. Maybe you could give that a try. Feel
free to get in touch offline - I'll be more than happy to help :)
- -- 
Thanks,
Regards,
Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
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[toogley]

Hey,

maybe a kind of "mentoring" program could also help?

I consider this as helpful, because in my initial open source contributions at debian, i
had some questions I felt too "embarrassed" asking them on a mailing list or in
a IRC channel. I thought these question were too basic/obvious and therefore I was
hesitating of asking.

Fortunately, the debian mentoring program caused one person to be my personal contact
person. And well, I felt less hesitated asking him those "silly" questions than
asking them on a open mailinglist.

=> The point is, asking a dumb question to one person is in my opinion easier than
asking a dumb question on a whole mailinglist with maybe hundreds of people reading it.

Therefore, i think providing one particular contact person to ask any question may result
in less hurdles for newbies.

regards,

toogley/tobi

> On August 29, 2016 at 6:16 PM Ankur Sinha <sanjay.ankur(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> 
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
> 
> Hiya,
> 
> Before I begin, if you're a member of the Fedora community already,
> please apply for membership to the fedora-join group in FAS[1].
> (That'll give us an idea of how many community members are interested
> in the SIG.) If you are a newbie and haven't introduced yourself yet,
> please do so. 
> 
> It's a somewhat long e-mail, but please bear with me and skim through
> it. I encourage *everyone* to reply to this e-mail with ideas/comments!
>
> Background and aim of this group
> - ---------------------------------
> 
> For years now, we've heard that new potential contributors (henceforth
> referred to as "newbies") have a hard time joining the community. The
> reasons for this include, but are not limited to:
> 
> - - newbies are timid (think squirrels!)
> - - newbies aren't used to the open source way of self education (Google
> the hell out of things, RTFM attitude, shamelessly ask questions if
> needed,  NO spoon feeding and so on)
> - - newbies lose interest if they don't make friends and integrate into
> the community in a few weeks (few days?).
> - - the community is *vast*, spread over different teams with their own
> systems and procedures, and for someone new, finding the right
> people/channels/procedures can be quite daunting.
> - - community members are usually quite busy to give detailed replies -
> we're all volunteers here.
> - - more?
> 
> So the idea of setting up the SIG was to set up channels of
> communication where newbies can come and in an extremely friendly
> environment form relationships within themselves, and with the
> community. 
> 
> For this to work, we need:
> 
> - - the infrastructure. We have:
> * #fedora-join
> * this mailing list
> - - community members hanging out in these channels and willing to speak
> to newbies, help them get in touch with the right people, help them
> find the right resources, and so on.
> - - newbies.
> 
> I hope this makes sense to everyone? Does everyone agree that the idea
> is a sane one? Any tweaks?
> 
> How are we doing?
> - ------------------
> 
> Well, not too good, I'd say. We've helped out some folks in the past,
> but we're not as active as we should be. Ideally, we should be up to
> our ears in e-mails and questions and people. So why aren't we? 
> 
> - - Part of this is of course because we're busy with other things; 
> - - Part of this is also because we haven't managed to gain enough
> traction to get more members of the community involved in helping out
> at the group. 
> - - I'm not sure the entire community is aware of the existence of the
> channels we've set up
> - - I'm not sure if we are visible enough for newbies to find us (for
> example, we're not on whatcanidoforfedora.org)
> 
> Other related reasons:
> - - we don't meet often (but do we need regular IRC meetings?)
> 
> What can we do?
> - ---------------
> 
> Now, this is the interesting bit! What do we do to improve the current
> state? Events (physical/IRC), make more noise, turn up in the right
> places, make ourselves more visible? 
> 
> Off the top of my head:
> - - We should make more noise to inform the community that we're here to
> help newbies get started
> - - I think we need to be better organised. For example, we don't have a
> SOP document (standard operating procedure) to guide either newbies or
> contributors to this group. Maybe we can set up a pagure repo where we
> open a new ticket for each newbie, and then close it when the newbie's
> integrated nicely with the community?
> - - We need to embrace metrics too - how many newbies do we have on this
> list? How many have we helped? Maybe we can set up a feedback form and
> request newbies to fill it out when they're ready? How many
> contributors do we have on this list? How often do people refer newbies
> to our channels?
> - - We need to integrate better with the community - we seem to be a
> standalone group at the moment, and that just won't work. Maybe we
> could integrate with CommOps better, since CommOps has members from the
> different teams?
> - - Maybe an IRC meeting a month just to keep ourselves active wouldn't
> be such a bad idea?
> - - The fas group is only for community members, do we need another for
> newbies? Should we just open the group to newbies? (This can then be
> used to give them wiki access which has been limited to cla+1 to deal
> with spam.)
> - - What else?
> 
> 
> Please, add to this list!
> 
> 
> Other stuff
> - ------------
> 
> Please do keep up with the Fedora hubs initiative[2]. It's going to be
> marvellous! It also has some functionality to enable people to join
> groups, but I still don't think it's a complete replacement for good
> old school conversation when it comes to forming relationships.
> 
> 
> Please, do reply to this e-mail with whatever ideas you have - we can't
> improve things without ideas and discussion.
> 
> I'm still drowning in work, but when I do have time off (like this long
> weekend!), I'm going to be active. Most of you know that I lurk in a
> lot of fedora channels as FranciscoD, please feel free to ping me.
> 
> [1] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/group/view/fedora-join
> [2] https://fedoramagazine.org/5tftw-2015-06-19/
> - -- 
> Thanks,
> Regards,
> Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"
> 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
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_______________________________________________
> fedora-join mailing list
> fedora-join(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/[e-mail]...

[Ankur Sinha]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

On Mon, 2016-08-29 at 19:14 +0200, toogley(a)mailbox.org wrote:
>  Hey,
>  
>  maybe a kind of "mentoring" program could also help? 
We have discussed this, yea, and in general we're all in favour of some
sort of mentoring program. Now, the issue comes up when we discuss the
implementation details.

>  
>  I consider this as helpful, because in my initial open source
>  contributions at debian, i had some questions I felt too
>  "embarrassed" asking them on a mailing list or in a IRC channel. I
>  thought these question were too basic/obvious and therefore I was
>  hesitating of asking.
>  
>  Fortunately, the debian mentoring program caused one person to be my
>  personal contact person. And well, I felt less hesitated asking him
>  those "silly" questions than asking them on a open mailinglist.
>  
>  => The point is, asking a dumb question to one person is in my
>  opinion easier than asking a dumb question on a whole mailinglist
>  with maybe hundreds of people reading it.
>  
>  Therefore, i think providing one particular contact person to ask any
>  question may result in less hurdles for newbies. 
I'm personally against a single point of contact system. It works in
quite a few cases, but it also doesn't in quite a few. The ambassadors
are using such a process, and there are quite a few cases where for
whatever reason, the mentor goes MIA, or the menatee goes MIA. It could
be because in the ambassadors process, there are many newbies and few
mentors, and the workload is quite heavy to carry as a result.

So, I'm more in favour of "pool mentoring", where you have a "pool of
mentors" that mentor a "pool of newbies". This way, newbies have more
than one point of contact. This has its own issues, though. Like you
said, newbies may prefer a more personal one to one style of mentoring
- - they may feel the same fear when it comes to asking "stupid"
questions to a pool of mentors. 

Community members putting themselves out there to be asked questions
may be the middle ground here - you don't officially have a mentor, but
you know a few people that are happy to receive personal e-mails and
the sort. I wonder how we can encourage this without causing community
members an overload?

Historically, we did have a team of mentors - I don't know why it died
out. We could reignite it required - we need to keep discussing this.
- -- 
Thanks,
Regards,
Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
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[toogley]

Hey,

additionally: In my opinion the fedora documentation in general is really hard
fragmented.

E.g. we have for lots of topics about three places to search for information.

Example for documents related to java packaing:

1.
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora_Draft_Documentation/0.1/html/...
2. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_an_RPM_package
3. https://fedorahosted.org/released/javapackages/doc/
4. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Java_packaging_common_problems
5. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Java
6. http://rpm5.org/docs/rpm-guide.pdf

with at least three (!) different places of fedora sources (the offical docs, the wiki,
and language specific things on fedorahosted.org).

I personally found it at least not efficient to search for specific things.

regards,

toogley/tobi


> On August 29, 2016 at 6:16 PM Ankur Sinha <sanjay.ankur(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> 
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
> 
> Hiya,
> 
> Before I begin, if you're a member of the Fedora community already,
> please apply for membership to the fedora-join group in FAS[1].
> (That'll give us an idea of how many community members are interested
> in the SIG.) If you are a newbie and haven't introduced yourself yet,
> please do so. 
> 
> It's a somewhat long e-mail, but please bear with me and skim through
> it. I encourage *everyone* to reply to this e-mail with ideas/comments!
> 
> Background and aim of this group
> - ---------------------------------
> 
> For years now, we've heard that new potential contributors (henceforth
> referred to as "newbies") have a hard time joining the community. The
> reasons for this include, but are not limited to:
> 
> - - newbies are timid (think squirrels!)
> - - newbies aren't used to the open source way of self education (Google
> the hell out of things, RTFM attitude, shamelessly ask questions if
> needed,  NO spoon feeding and so on)
> - - newbies lose interest if they don't make friends and integrate into
> the community in a few weeks (few days?).
> - - the community is *vast*, spread over different teams with their own
> systems and procedures, and for someone new, finding the right
> people/channels/procedures can be quite daunting.
> - - community members are usually quite busy to give detailed replies -
> we're all volunteers here.
> - - more?
> 
> So the idea of setting up the SIG was to set up channels of
> communication where newbies can come and in an extremely friendly
> environment form relationships within themselves, and with the
> community. 
> 
> For this to work, we need:
> 
> - - the infrastructure. We have:
> * #fedora-join
> * this mailing list
> - - community members hanging out in these channels and willing to speak
> to newbies, help them get in touch with the right people, help them
> find the right resources, and so on.
> - - newbies.
> 
> I hope this makes sense to everyone? Does everyone agree that the idea
> is a sane one? Any tweaks?
> 
> How are we doing?
> - ------------------
> 
> Well, not too good, I'd say. We've helped out some folks in the past,
> but we're not as active as we should be. Ideally, we should be up to
> our ears in e-mails and questions and people. So why aren't we? 
> 
> - - Part of this is of course because we're busy with other things; 
> - - Part of this is also because we haven't managed to gain enough
> traction to get more members of the community involved in helping out
> at the group. 
> - - I'm not sure the entire community is aware of the existence of the
> channels we've set up
> - - I'm not sure if we are visible enough for newbies to find us (for
> example, we're not on whatcanidoforfedora.org)
> 
> Other related reasons:
> - - we don't meet often (but do we need regular IRC meetings?)
> 
> What can we do?
> - ---------------
> 
> Now, this is the interesting bit! What do we do to improve the current
> state? Events (physical/IRC), make more noise, turn up in the right
> places, make ourselves more visible? 
> 
> Off the top of my head:
> - - We should make more noise to inform the community that we're here to
> help newbies get started
> - - I think we need to be better organised. For example, we don't have a
> SOP document (standard operating procedure) to guide either newbies or
> contributors to this group. Maybe we can set up a pagure repo where we
> open a new ticket for each newbie, and then close it when the newbie's
> integrated nicely with the community?
> - - We need to embrace metrics too - how many newbies do we have on this
> list? How many have we helped? Maybe we can set up a feedback form and
> request newbies to fill it out when they're ready? How many
> contributors do we have on this list? How often do people refer newbies
> to our channels?
> - - We need to integrate better with the community - we seem to be a
> standalone group at the moment, and that just won't work. Maybe we
> could integrate with CommOps better, since CommOps has members from the
> different teams?
> - - Maybe an IRC meeting a month just to keep ourselves active wouldn't
> be such a bad idea?
> - - The fas group is only for community members, do we need another for
> newbies? Should we just open the group to newbies? (This can then be
> used to give them wiki access which has been limited to cla+1 to deal
> with spam.)
> - - What else?
> 
> 
> Please, add to this list!
> 
> 
> Other stuff
> - ------------
> 
> Please do keep up with the Fedora hubs initiative[2]. It's going to be
> marvellous! It also has some functionality to enable people to join
> groups, but I still don't think it's a complete replacement for good
> old school conversation when it comes to forming relationships.
> 
> 
> Please, do reply to this e-mail with whatever ideas you have - we can't
> improve things without ideas and discussion.
> 
> I'm still drowning in work, but when I do have time off (like this long
> weekend!), I'm going to be active. Most of you know that I lurk in a
> lot of fedora channels as FranciscoD, please feel free to ping me.
> 
> [1] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/group/view/fedora-join
> [2] https://fedoramagazine.org/5tftw-2015-06-19/
> - -- 
> Thanks,
> Regards,
> Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"
> 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
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>
_______________________________________________
> fedora-join mailing list
> fedora-join(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/[e-mail]...

[Ankur Sinha]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

On Mon, 2016-08-29 at 19:30 +0200, toogley(a)mailbox.org wrote:
>  Hey,
>  
>  additionally: In my opinion the fedora documentation in general is
>  really hard fragmented.
>  
>  E.g. we have for lots of topics about three places to search for
>  information. 
Yea - the wiki is a nightmare itself, tbh. 

>  
>  Example for documents related to java packaing:
>  
>  1. https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-
>  US/Fedora_Draft_Documentation/0.1/html/RPM_Guide/index.html 
You see the work draft somewhere, it should tell you that this isn't
finished.

>  2. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_an_RPM_package
>  3. https://fedorahosted.org/released/javapackages/doc/ 
I've never looked at this in my life. I don't know if this has been
vetted by the FPC - it looks more like some Java packagers coming
together. 

>  4. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Java_packaging_common_problems
This is more tips and tricks. 

>  5. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Java 
This is the one I would refer to. All the Packaging pages on the wiki
are maintained by the Fedora packaging committee.

>  6. http://rpm5.org/docs/rpm-guide.pdf 
This is general rpm info - not specific to Fedora.
>  
>  with at least three (!) different places of fedora sources (the
>  offical docs, the wiki, and language specific things on
>  fedorahosted.org).
>  
>  I personally found it at least not efficient to search for specific
>  things. 
So, the issue here seems to be "how do I know which one to follow?" -
this is a common issue on the web tbh, too much information - but how
does one decide what a good source of information is? I see two
solutions. One is experience - when I began, I didn't know either. Now
that I've been around for a while, I know what pages the FPC does, and
in my head, these are the official documents. The second solution is
simply to ask someone. This brings us back to the mentoring
discussion..
- -- 
Thanks,
Regards,
Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
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[Sachin S. Kamath]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 12:16 PM, Ankur Sinha <sanjay.ankur(a)gmail.com&gt;
wrote:

>  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>  Hash: SHA256
>
>  Hiya,
>  
Hi Ankur!


>  Before I begin, if you're a member of the Fedora community already,
>  please apply for membership to the fedora-join group in FAS[1].
>  (That'll give us an idea of how many community members are interested
>  in the SIG.) If you are a newbie and haven't introduced yourself yet,
>  please do so.
>
>  It's a somewhat long e-mail, but please bear with me and skim through
>  it. I encourage *everyone* to reply to this e-mail with ideas/comments!
>
>  Background and aim of this group
>  - ---------------------------------
>
>  For years now, we've heard that new potential contributors (henceforth
>  referred to as "newbies") have a hard time joining the community. The
>  reasons for this include, but are not limited to:
>
>  - - newbies are timid (think squirrels!)
>  - - newbies aren't used to the open source way of self education (Google
>  the hell out of things, RTFM attitude, shamelessly ask questions if
>  needed,  NO spoon feeding and so on)
>  - - newbies lose interest if they don't make friends and integrate into
>  the community in a few weeks (few days?).
>  - - the community is *vast*, spread over different teams with their own
>  systems and procedures, and for someone new, finding the right
>  people/channels/procedures can be quite daunting.
>  - - community members are usually quite busy to give detailed replies -
>  we're all volunteers here.
>  - - more? 

>  So the idea of setting up the SIG was to set up channels of
>  communication where newbies can come and in an extremely friendly
>  environment form relationships within themselves, and with the
>  community.
>  
As tobi mentioned, mentorship sounds like a really good idea. This will
definitely help out a lot of so so-called "newbies" get started. I know how
it feels like to be one and I must say I was really hesitant to start
mailing list threads in the beginning. Apart from this, it'll also be a
nice idea to have weekly/bi-weekly/monthly meetings on the channel or any
of the fedora meeting channels to keep track of things and help newcomers
there. I see traces of fedora-join meetings in meetbot[1] but looks like
it's not active now. It'll be really nice if someone can step-up and
conduct meetings.


>  For this to work, we need:
>
>  - - the infrastructure. We have:
>  * #fedora-join
>  * this mailing list
>  - - community members hanging out in these channels and willing to speak
>  to newbies, help them get in touch with the right people, help them
>  find the right resources, and so on.
>  - - newbies.
>
>  I hope this makes sense to everyone? Does everyone agree that the idea
>  is a sane one? Any tweaks?
>
>  How are we doing?
>  - ------------------
>
>  Well, not too good, I'd say. We've helped out some folks in the past,
>  but we're not as active as we should be. Ideally, we should be up to
>  our ears in e-mails and questions and people. So why aren't we?
>
>  - - Part of this is of course because we're busy with other things;
>  - - Part of this is also because we haven't managed to gain enough
>  traction to get more members of the community involved in helping out
>  at the group.
>  - - I'm not sure the entire community is aware of the existence of the
>  channels we've set up
>  - - I'm not sure if we are visible enough for newbies to find us (for
>  example, we're not on whatcanidoforfedora.org)
>
>  Hmm, isn't the website a part of the Fedora Join effort to bring in more
contributors? I don't see how it'll fit in there. We can definitely have a
footer which says "More Questions? Talk to us on #fedora-join on Freenode"
or something along those lines.


>  Other related reasons:
>  - - we don't meet often (but do we need regular IRC meetings?)
>
>  What can we do?
>  - ---------------
>
>  Now, this is the interesting bit! What do we do to improve the current
>  state? Events (physical/IRC), make more noise, turn up in the right
>  places, make ourselves more visible?
>
>  Off the top of my head:
>  - - We should make more noise to inform the community that we're here to
>  help newbies get started
>  - - I think we need to be better organised. For example, we don't have a
>  SOP document (standard operating procedure) to guide either newbies or
>  contributors to this group. Maybe we can set up a pagure repo where we
>  open a new ticket for each newbie, and then close it when the newbie's
>  integrated nicely with the community?
>  - - We need to embrace metrics too - how many newbies do we have on this
>  list? How many have we helped? Maybe we can set up a feedback form and
>  request newbies to fill it out when they're ready? How many
>  contributors do we have on this list? How often do people refer newbies
>  to our channels?
>  
I can work on the metrics part of it. I am working on a tool[2] to gather
user statistics and recently added a feature to get statistics of an entire
FAS group. The tool requires polishing and I'm planning to have a web
interface for it soon. If you guys can tell me what kind of stats/metrics
is required, I can ready 'em up :)


- - We need to integrate better with the community - we seem to be a
>  standalone group at the moment, and that just won't work. Maybe
> we
>  could integrate with CommOps better, since CommOps has members from the
>  different teams?
>  
Sounds like a plan, I will open a ticket regarding this and discuss in
tomorrow's CommOps meeting.

cc-ing CommOps here for more comments.


>  - - Maybe an IRC meeting a month just to keep ourselves active
> wouldn't
>  be such a bad idea?
>  
+1


>  - - The fas group is only for community members, do we need another
> for
>  newbies? Should we just open the group to newbies? (This can then be
>  used to give them wiki access which has been limited to cla+1 to deal
>  with spam.)
>  
Spammers are social engineering a lot nowadays. We cannot really afford to
open up to new contributors just yet.


>  - - What else?
>
>
>  Please, add to this list!
>
>
>  Other stuff
>  - ------------
>
>  Please do keep up with the Fedora hubs initiative[2]. It's going to be
>  marvellous! It also has some functionality to enable people to join
>  groups, but I still don't think it's a complete replacement for good
>  old school conversation when it comes to forming relationships.
>
>
>  Please, do reply to this e-mail with whatever ideas you have - we can't
>  improve things without ideas and discussion.
>
>  I'm still drowning in work, but when I do have time off (like this long
>  weekend!), I'm going to be active. Most of you know that I lurk in a
>  lot of fedora channels as FranciscoD, please feel free to ping me.
>
>  [1] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/group/view/fedora-join
>  [2] https://fedoramagazine.org/5tftw-2015-06-19/
>  - --
>  Thanks,
>  Regards,
>  Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"
>
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
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>  _______________________________________________
>  fedora-join mailing list
>  fedora-join(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/fedora-join@
>  lists.fedoraproject.org
>  


-- 
Cheers,
Sachin S. Kamath
https://www.sachinwrites.xyz

[1]
https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/sresults/?group_id=fedora-join&type...
[2] https://pagure.io/gsoc-stats

[Ankur Sinha]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

<snip>
>  
>  As tobi mentioned, mentorship sounds like a really good idea. This
>  will definitely help out a lot of so so-called "newbies" get started.
>  I know how it feels like to be one and I must say I was really
>  hesitant to start mailing list threads in the beginning.  
Yea - we need to start discussing mentoring or other ways to encourage
newbies to ask "stupid" questions. It's an attitude one needs to learn
tbh. I've put this on my list.

>  Apart from this, it'll also be a nice idea to have weekly/bi-
>  weekly/monthly meetings on the channel or any of the fedora meeting
>  channels to keep track of things and help newcomers there. I see
>  traces of fedora-join meetings in meetbot[1] but looks like it's not
>  active now. It'll be really nice if someone can step-up and conduct
>  meetings.  
We can do one meeting every two weeks - I'll send around a doodle
thingy later so we can pick a slot.

>   
>  > <snip> 
>  Hmm, isn't the website a part of the Fedora Join effort to bring
> in
>  more contributors? I don't see how it'll fit in there. We can
>  definitely have a footer which says "More Questions? Talk to us on
>  #fedora-join on Freenode" or something along those lines. 
Not really - whatcanido came up independently and has been growing
independently since. I was looking at it earlier today - I don't quite
see how sending a newbie to "wiki/anaconda/contribute" helps - I think
it's become too specific and too detailed. It doesn't really tell a
newbie about the overall picture at all..

>   
>  > <snip> 
> 
> I can work on the metrics part of it. I am working on a tool[2] to
> gather user statistics and recently added a feature to get statistics
> of an entire FAS group. The tool requires polishing and I'm planning
> to have a web interface for it soon. If you guys can tell me what
> kind of stats/metrics is required, I can ready 'em up :)
> 
Lovely! This will be helpful. I think the one issue we've always had is
we've never had a list of *specific* issues that newbies face.

>  
>  > - - We need to integrate better with the community - we seem to be
>  > a
>  > standalone group at the moment, and that just won't work. Maybe we
>  > could integrate with CommOps better, since CommOps has members from
>  > the
>  > different teams?
>  
>  Sounds like a plan, I will open a ticket regarding this and discuss
>  in tomorrow's CommOps meeting. 
>  
>  cc-ing CommOps here for more comments. 
+1 

>    
>  > - - Maybe an IRC meeting a month just to keep ourselves active
>  > wouldn't
>  > be such a bad idea?
>  
>  +1
>   
>  > - - The fas group is only for community members, do we need another
>  > for
>  > newbies? Should we just open the group to newbies? (This can then
>  > be
>  > used to give them wiki access which has been limited to cla+1 to
>  > deal
>  > with spam.)
>  
>  Spammers are social engineering a lot nowadays. We cannot really
>  afford to open up to new contributors just yet. 
Once the hubs come up and we move away from wiki user pages, I think
we'll be fine with this.
- -- 
Thanks,
Regards,
Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
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[Justin W. Flory]

Okay, a little late and it's awesome that this thread has generated so
much noise. Going to try to cut through it and offer some of my own
feedback.

On 08/29/2016 12:16 PM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
>  Hiya,
>  
>  Before I begin, if you're a member of the Fedora community already,
>  please apply for membership to the fedora-join group in FAS[1].
>  (That'll give us an idea of how many community members are interested
>  in the SIG.) If you are a newbie and haven't introduced yourself yet,
>  please do so. 
>  
>  It's a somewhat long e-mail, but please bear with me and skim through
>  it. I encourage *everyone* to reply to this e-mail with ideas/comments!
>  
>  Background and aim of this group
>  ---------------------------------
>  
>  For years now, we've heard that new potential contributors (henceforth
>  referred to as "newbies") have a hard time joining the community. The
>  reasons for this include, but are not limited to:
>  
>  - newbies are timid (think squirrels!)
>  - newbies aren't used to the open source way of self education (Google
>  the hell out of things, RTFM attitude, shamelessly ask questions if
>  needed,  NO spoon feeding and so on)
>  - newbies lose interest if they don't make friends and integrate into
>  the community in a few weeks (few days?). 
On this note specifically, for Flock 2016, Bee Padalkar (FAS: bee2502)
gave a presentation that looked at the average lifecycle / length of
interest of a contributor's time in Fedora. I think Sachin also
contributed stats to this as well. :) I *highly* *highly* recommend
watching this talk and passing any questions along too:

    https://youtu.be/BzoN8RDK98A


https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-flock-openqa/2016-08-02/flock201...

>  - the community is *vast*, spread over different teams with their
> own
>  systems and procedures, and for someone new, finding the right
>  people/channels/procedures can be quite daunting.
>  - community members are usually quite busy to give detailed replies -
>  we're all volunteers here.
>  - more?
>  
>  So the idea of setting up the SIG was to set up channels of
>  communication where newbies can come and in an extremely friendly
>  environment form relationships within themselves, and with the
>  community. 
>  
>  For this to work, we need:
>  
>  - the infrastructure. We have:
>  * #fedora-join
>  * this mailing list
>  - community members hanging out in these channels and willing to speak
>  to newbies, help them get in touch with the right people, help them
>  find the right resources, and so on.
>  - newbies.
>  
>  I hope this makes sense to everyone? Does everyone agree that the idea
>  is a sane one? Any tweaks?
>   
The idea itself is sound and I have no objections. However, I think
since this SIG formed, a lot of things have changed in the project. For
one, CommOps addresses many of the bigger, more abstract goals of this
SIG (e.g. thinking of on-boarding resources and improving communication
for old and new contributors in the project). CommOps spends a lot of
time focusing on on-boarding resources, so I think it would be a better
use of people power to focus discussion on on-boarding (from a general
perspective) to CommOps.

I think the Join SIG still has its place as a group to be an active
participant with newcomers and to help coordinate outreach events
targeted towards bringing new people into the project (I'm already
thinking of ways Diversity Team and Join SIG could partner on this too).

>  How are we doing?
>  ------------------
>  
>  Well, not too good, I'd say. We've helped out some folks in the past,
>  but we're not as active as we should be. Ideally, we should be up to
>  our ears in e-mails and questions and people. So why aren't we? 
>  
>  - Part of this is of course because we're busy with other things;  
In order for the SIG to really take focus, I think we'll need someone to
really take lead and charge on this. I'm willing to follow here. :)

>  - Part of this is also because we haven't managed to gain enough
>  traction to get more members of the community involved in helping out
>  at the group.  
Hopefully this is something CommOps could help with.

>  - I'm not sure the entire community is aware of the existence of
> the
>  channels we've set up
>  - I'm not sure if we are visible enough for newbies to find us (for
>  example, we're not on whatcanidoforfedora.org)
>  
>  Other related reasons:
>  - we don't meet often (but do we need regular IRC meetings?)
>   
We could meet monthly or once every other week to work through existing
items, make progress on any goals we have, or even come up with items
and make the goals. :)

>  What can we do?
>  ---------------
>  
>  Now, this is the interesting bit! What do we do to improve the current
>  state? Events (physical/IRC), make more noise, turn up in the right
>  places, make ourselves more visible? 
>  
>  Off the top of my head:
>  - We should make more noise to inform the community that we're here to
>  help newbies get started
>  - I think we need to be better organised. For example, we don't have a
>  SOP document (standard operating procedure) to guide either newbies or
>  contributors to this group. Maybe we can set up a pagure repo where we
>  open a new ticket for each newbie, and then close it when the newbie's
>  integrated nicely with the community? 
I think this should be the first step - I don't think we're at a
capacity where we should start flagging and highlighting the SIG yet -
there's not enough active members on the list and in the channel to keep
up with even the minimal traffic we get now, sometimes. I'd prefer to
focus on a SOP and resources to quickly give a first, helpful response
to a newcomer or someone looking at getting started.

>  - We need to embrace metrics too - how many newbies do we have on
> this
>  list? How many have we helped? Maybe we can set up a feedback form and
>  request newbies to fill it out when they're ready? How many
>  contributors do we have on this list? How often do people refer newbies
>  to our channels?
>  - We need to integrate better with the community - we seem to be a
>  standalone group at the moment, and that just won't work. Maybe we
>  could integrate with CommOps better, since CommOps has members from the
>  different teams? 
I think this is also a possibility. :)

>  - Maybe an IRC meeting a month just to keep ourselves active
> wouldn't
>  be such a bad idea? 
+1!

>  - The fas group is only for community members, do we need another
> for
>  newbies? Should we just open the group to newbies? (This can then be
>  used to give them wiki access which has been limited to cla+1 to deal
>  with spam.)
>  - What else?
>  
>  
>  Please, add to this list!
>  
>  
>  Other stuff
>  ------------
>  
>  Please do keep up with the Fedora hubs initiative[2]. It's going to be
>  marvellous! It also has some functionality to enable people to join
>  groups, but I still don't think it's a complete replacement for good
>  old school conversation when it comes to forming relationships.
>  
>  
>  Please, do reply to this e-mail with whatever ideas you have - we can't
>  improve things without ideas and discussion. 
Hope some of these thoughts are helpful. :)

>  
>  I'm still drowning in work, but when I do have time off (like this long
>  weekend!), I'm going to be active. Most of you know that I lurk in a
>  lot of fedora channels as FranciscoD, please feel free to ping me.
>  
>  [1] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/group/view/fedora-join
>  [2] https://fedoramagazine.org/5tftw-2015-06-19/
>  _______________________________________________
>  fedora-join mailing list
>  fedora-join(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/[e-mail]...
>   
-- 
Cheers,
Justin W. Flory
jflory7(a)gmail.com