On Tue, Mar 05, 2019 at 03:39:38PM -0800, Martin Owens wrote:
Dear Inkscape,
We had an involved discussion about membership in the Inkscape project; how we can be welcoming and how we can organise ourselves for both casual and formal mentoring.
Thanks again for capturing the discussion from this morning.
Why:
- To increase the number of contributors to the Inkscape project.
- To actively improve the diversity of the project.
- To inspire developers to develop for users needs.
How:
We already have a code of conduct, which is a firm code that everyone who is a part of Inkscape must abide to in order to be a part of this community. But on top of this, we wish to draft a "Universal Greeting" policy. This establishes the ways in which existing contributors interact with new contributors and users who may become contributors. We wish all Inkscape project contributors to be casual mentors to all other contributors and be mindful of our roles as guides.
The goal is to improve the welcoming atmosphere of all of our official channels by providing a clear declaration of what being a good greeter is as well as a clear list of possible responses to each of the various questions, suggestions and criticisms of the project.
Contributors do not have to sign up to the policy, but may be asked to not respond to new contributors until a greeter has had a chance to direct the new person to the right places for kind of contribution they want to make.
What I was thinking in the discussion, actually, was more a "guideline" than a "policy". I.e. describe what we feel are best practices. I don't think it is feasible for us to track or enforce anything about it, but provide it as a resource for people who are volunteering to help new people get involved.
Essentially, the idea is when someone shows up interested in helping on the project, we'd feel them out for their general area of interest, and then use this guideline to help figure out what advice/directions to give them. For instance, if they want to help get Mac OS improved, the guideline would be to point them at our Mac OS discussion channel and relevant wiki pages; or, if their interest in animation it might point them to an entry in the roadmap and/or an explanation about our big picture plan (or non-plan) for that feature.
I wasn't thinking it would need to be quite so formal as a policy, it'd be just guidance materials, and general reminder that all of us need to take time to help new developers in getting engaged and establishing a footing with the project.
Tasks:
- [ ] Draft Universal Greeting Declaration. How to basics
- [ ] Document of Topics and good responses.
The next topic involves the old Inkscape Roadmap. This is sometimes known as the Inkscape Forecast as it's less of a document of what Inkscape will do, or even wishes it could do, but a way to document what things contributors are known to be working on and interested in.
To improve this whole process of direction in the project and improve how new features land we wish to create a "Forecast Party", these are monthly events which would be hosted on Rocket Chat (and IRC) where we would.
A. In the meeting before a release, review the whole forecast and decide on the big picture direction of the project.
I had suggested it be timed in cadence with the release but wasn't sure if it should precede the release or follow it. Having it following the release might end up solving both A and B in this list.
B. After a new release, have a landing space for new contributors to the project where we talk about the exiting possibilities and act as a meet and greet for everyone. C. All other months would be a focus on a specific forecast or wish list item. For example on month may be CMYK, another month may be multi-page. The idea is to get experts and excited people into the same room and talking about the next steps for the feature, throwing open the doors to the Inkscape project and promoting the events as a way to get into moving Inkscape forwards. Show and tell, videos and other media are expected to be parts of the meeting.
We also talked about tying this monthly activity in with the video tutorial "watch parties" that Michele suggested last week.
Tasks:
- [ ] Create a rocket chat channel for the new event
- [ ] Talk with vectors team about how to promote the events into the
wider community
- [ ] Talk with other developers about promoting the events in developer spaces
- [ ] Schedule some events to kick of the project. An introductory
meeting to talk about the forecast list itself and what we should be meeting about next.
- [ ] Set up a Forecast Inkscape project, only the forecast managers
can post new issues to the kanban board, but it would be used to monitor and understand the Inkscape forecast in detail as well as document previous discussions.
Bryce