Re: onboarding

[Carnë Draug]

On 3/12/20 8:57 PM, Mike Miller wrote:
> Hi Nick,
>
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 11:20:37 -0400, Nicholas Jankowski wrote:
>> - i'm a broken record regarding this for every organization I'm in, but how
>> could this be used to bring on/educate the newbies? (not just GSOC)
>> "getting started", "setting up your pc to contribute", "running windows,
>> believe it or not all is not lost you can still help", etc. I could see
>> webinar-esque value to something like those.
>
> I'm also very into these topics. I've talked with people outside of
> Octave pretty often about a variety of ideas related to welcoming and
> onboarding.
>
> Some ideas I'd be interested in helping make happen:
>
> - a dedicated web portal to help onboard new developers
> - same but tailored for SoC (replace/improve the Getting Started wiki)
> - regular online sprints or IRC sessions to help people learn patches
> - Q&A sessions (à la Reddit AMA)
> - get feedback on the build system to make it easier to get started
> - new tools/scripts for easier contribution
> - try alternatives to IRC and mailing lists to see if easier for some
>
> Happy to talk with you more about this topic, either on or off list, and
> make something happen.

Hi Mike

Those all sound like nice ideas.  I've been thinking of similar stuff
for a work project (also FOSS).  Is there anyone aware of any research
on the effect of such different things have on a project community?  I
would imagine that different things will have different levels of
impacts, and may probably be a function of the stage of the project.

All of the stuff I read about this is opinion articles and very rarely
there's even a story backing it up.  Anyone knows of any work done on
this?

Thanks
carandraug