Tying threads together.

[Máirín Duffy]

On Wed, 2012-02-15 at 10:00 -0700, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
> The best way to NOT be a place of permission is to clearly state that 
> contributors are enabled, how they are enabled, and what resources they 
> have at their disposal, and make this place of information incredibly 
> easy to understand, well-known, and obvious to newcomers.  And ensure 
> that the processes that back up the enablement are just as clear, or at 
> least, not broken, and have clear owners. And ultimately, make sure that 
> we are not a place simply of Institutional Memory and the Those Who Know 
> How, Can.
> 
> I think we, the Board, and the wider community, need to tune in the dial 
> a little bit and focus on usability of our community.  It's not just 
> "joining the project" -- it's about thriving once you are in.
> 
> Anyone know if we're allowed to have a Project Usability FAD? :) (That 
> was a joke. Just to be clear.)
> 
> Thoughts welcomed. (Note: THIS EMAIL IS NOT A DIRECTIVE, just long-winded.)

AMEN.

Three initiatives I believe will seriously up the level of project
usability:

- Fedora open badges (eg https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_RPG from
early 2011 or more recently
http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/02/15/ubuntu-accomplishments-lens )
Because if you set out specific tasks and define them well enough that
someone new to the project could pick them up, and enable them to
visibly watch their skillsets and progress in helping the project grow,
you're not only leading them to get valuable work done, you're also
motivating them and reminding them of the awesome things they've
accomplished. (The design team has seen evidence of this with the
manually-administered design ninja bounties)

- Fixing mailing lists for the love of all that is holy and even that
which is not (eg
http://blog.linuxgrrl.com/2010/03/16/a-rich-web-interface-for-mailing-lists/ ) so we can actually productively get work done.

- Collecting project statistics to figure out the overall health of the
project and identify which areas need the most care & feeding (I listed
this last because I think we know in heart-breaking detail the problems
to go ahead and start solving some NOW, and I wouldn't want us to be
stuck waiting on a stats platform to be built to tell us the same
things. Long tmer, though, this is a critically needed part of project
maintenance)

~m