Introduction and new, exploring contributors

[Karsten Wade]

On Tue, Sep 07, 2010 at 12:52:55AM -0400, Jon Stanley wrote:
 
> This is complete awesomeness.  

Brother Jon speaks my mind, aka, +1.

> What tasks do folks need to accomplish?
> 
> I think that the majority of people coming to the site are going to
> want to see what Fedora can do, sort of like a showcase of sorts. From
> there, they should be able to easily download the distribution, and be
> able to join as a contributor.

I want to offer some ideas of what we want to showcase where it comes
to users *and* contributors.

I have an idea that where a user is going to be happiest is with a
Linux distro that has a community whose values and practices most
closely resemble the user's own.  When it comes to Fedora, I think of
this in my mind as, "Do you mind the occasional bit of masking tape
and unfinished trim around the doorways?  We'll fix it next week, or
certainly by next release!"

Those more comfortable users are, I reckon, more likely to become
participants and contributors ... more likely to hear that increased
on-boarding message and respond to it ... of they already love the
community that makes the distro.

More on the masking tape theory here, with the tape being the way we
marked columns on the walls for scheduling at a FUDCon.

http://iquaid.org/2009/10/30/how-to-choose-a-community-difference-moment/

Is there a way that we can showcase Fedora so that is shows these
values from the community members?

What is missing that should be there?  What content should we focus on
producing?

Is there some clever way to question people and determine how Fedora
could work for them?

I took this the other day ... http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/
... the Linud Distribution Chooser.  I can't be sure how the system
works and what it takes to game it, how accurate it is for people,
etc.  Do I take it as a good or a bad sign that they include "Fedora
Core" in the list if distros they test against?  Their may be
prejudice coded in there, and looking behind the code would be
interesting ... for someone who is not me and can understand what it
is doing and if we can learn from it, reuse it, etc.

> Indirectly, yes. A recent study[2] of the Fedora community found that
> 74% of our contributors started out as users. Some salient quotes from
> that also explained that these users didn't know that they could
> become contributors, I think owing to the fact that they thought that
> hardcore kernel development was required or something of the sort -
> i.e. an educational problem that it's not widely known that we need
> people other than developers to put together a distro :)

We've long presumed that was the case, that people arrive by being
consumers, then participate, then contribute.  We definitely need more
help in attracting the type of users who will have the closest enough
fit with the type of community.

I'm not interested in coding for a stale community type.  This is an
area of social science I don't know a bit about, but I'm curious.  Is
there an urban-type different from a suburban-type and rural-type?
Mountain versus ocean?  What about personal ethics?  Organizational
beliefs?

Seeing as how I seem to see all types across all projects, maybe it is
truly random and the community values don't matter as much in
attracting a well-rounded contributor base.

These are the things I've been wondering about, and they may be still
too esoteric for a class to have anything to do with.  But if there is
something with pondering in the sharing, good.

- Karsten
-- 
name:  Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener
team:                Red Hat Community Architecture 
uri:               http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki
gpg:                                       AD0E0C41
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