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@k88hudson
Last active August 29, 2015 14:12
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Questions: OS Contributors

Questions: Open Source Projects + Contributors

New contributors/contributor culture

  • What constitutes a great ticket for first-time contributors?
  • How do you work towards creating positive environment for contributors on your own projects?
  • What common practises in OS are counter-productive to finding new contributors?
  • What makes a good CONTRIBUTE.md/“get started” documentation?
  • Where do you look for new contributors?

Practical issues

  • How do you manage the time-constraints of project releases while still supporting casual contributors?
  • What if a contributor starts working on something that you think might be inappropriate for their skill level/interest?
  • What if a contributor accidentally duplicates work or you accidentally resolve an issue when a contributor starts working on it?
  • What if a contributor submits a patch but you forget to review it/they don’t respond to comments for a long time? What’s the right way to approach getting back on track?
  • How important is it to respond quickly to issues/PRs? How do you manage this with not getting distracted from your other work responsibilities?
  • Any tips for using Github issues (labels, etc) effectively to encourage contribution? What makes a good mailing list? A bad one?

Contributor engagement

  • Can you talk a little about contributor engagement? What do your most engaged contributors have in common? What do you do to make them happy?
  • Once a contributor lands a patch, what actions can you take to encourage them stick around?
  • How should product cycles/process account for contributor engagement?
  • How should contributors be involved in road-mapping/planning? Can you highlight instances where this has been effective?
  • In your opinion, what are some of the reasons first-time contributors don’t come back?

Philosophy

  • What value do contributors provide you, as a project owner? What value to you get as a contributor?
  • How do you encourage diversity in your contributor base? How would you like to improve?
  • What are you bad at? What do you want to do better?
  • What is OS bad at in general? What do we all need to do better?
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