Our new 'Help Wanted!' wiki page

[Gabriela Gibson <ga...@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

Please see our new experimental 'Help Wanted!' wiki page here:

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=61316656

I suggested to Jan that this might be a good idea to initially inspire
new contributers, and he gave me 15 projects to fill in, 5 for each
category.

I think 5 is a good number, not too long a read, and a good selection,
there is something in there for everyone.

We might like to extend the description into an extra, deeper level,
if you like that, please send me the blurb and I'll make a page and
link that to the project entry.

Let me know what you think --- the headings might look at bit uhh,
colourful, if you prefer a different heading for the categories let me
know.

G

-- 
Visit my Coding Diary: http://gabriela-gibson.blogspot.com/

Re: Our new 'Help Wanted!' wiki page

[Ian C <ia...@amham.net>]

On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 1:32 AM, Peter Kelly <pm...@apache.org> wrote:
>> On 28 Aug 2015, at 10:30 pm, Gabriela Gibson <ga...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Please see our new experimental 'Help Wanted!' wiki page here:
>>
>> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=61316656
>>
>> I suggested to Jan that this might be a good idea to initially inspire
>> new contributers, and he gave me 15 projects to fill in, 5 for each
>> category.
>
> Hi Gabriela, great idea - I think this is actually very important for potential new contributors, as it’s admittedly been pretty confusing for new people about where they could start to date, so having some ideas about what they could work on is likely to be very helpful.
>
> I think it would be good to get these up on the website under the “how to contribute” section. Probably a link to the wiki would be fine for now; I have some ideas about how we could better integrate that into the website. I’ve seen some other projects that do this, but none of them very well. I think a good approach for us would be to think of it as part-education and part-contribution (that is, people can see that here is a task they could work on which would help them develop particular knowledge, while also making a concrete contribution to the project).
>
> We need to do a better job of introductory documentation to help people navigate the code. This is something I’ve been meaning to work on for some now but have been distracted by other things (primary work on Flat and my day job). But now that we’ve got the first release done with an imminent announcement due, we’ll start to get more interest. I’ll try to find some time in the next few days to go through the wiki/website and expand on what we’ve got, and leave gaps for others to fill in where appropriate.

I have return to looking at gettng the ODF flow working.  I can get a
greatly mutilated version of my original document back. The fact that
I get anything is a step in the right direction.
And w.r.t documenting I am trying to throw some comments into the code
as I find things that are important.

The key to the whole beast is the BDT module. We need to document that
and the lenses (function pointers) used. In some ways the rest is just
window dressing around that one module. A gross over simplification,
but I'm sure you know what I mean.

I'm still getting my head around how to fit the ODF elements into that world.

>
>> I think 5 is a good number, not too long a read, and a good selection,
>> there is something in there for everyone.
>>
>> We might like to extend the description into an extra, deeper level,
>> if you like that, please send me the blurb and I'll make a page and
>> link that to the project entry.
>
> Agreed - I’ll send you some text shortly after going through the task lists in more detail.
>
>>
>> Let me know what you think --- the headings might look at bit uhh,
>> colourful, if you prefer a different heading for the categories let me
>> know.
>
> These look fine :)
>
> —
> Dr Peter M. Kelly
> pmkelly@apache.org
>
> PGP key: http://www.kellypmk.net/pgp-key <http://www.kellypmk.net/pgp-key>
> (fingerprint 5435 6718 59F0 DD1F BFA0 5E46 2523 BAA1 44AE 2966)
>



-- 
Cheers,

Ian C

Re: Our new 'Help Wanted!' wiki page

[Peter Kelly <pm...@apache.org>]

> On 28 Aug 2015, at 10:30 pm, Gabriela Gibson <ga...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Please see our new experimental 'Help Wanted!' wiki page here:
> 
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=61316656
> 
> I suggested to Jan that this might be a good idea to initially inspire
> new contributers, and he gave me 15 projects to fill in, 5 for each
> category.

Hi Gabriela, great idea - I think this is actually very important for potential new contributors, as it’s admittedly been pretty confusing for new people about where they could start to date, so having some ideas about what they could work on is likely to be very helpful.

I think it would be good to get these up on the website under the “how to contribute” section. Probably a link to the wiki would be fine for now; I have some ideas about how we could better integrate that into the website. I’ve seen some other projects that do this, but none of them very well. I think a good approach for us would be to think of it as part-education and part-contribution (that is, people can see that here is a task they could work on which would help them develop particular knowledge, while also making a concrete contribution to the project).

We need to do a better job of introductory documentation to help people navigate the code. This is something I’ve been meaning to work on for some now but have been distracted by other things (primary work on Flat and my day job). But now that we’ve got the first release done with an imminent announcement due, we’ll start to get more interest. I’ll try to find some time in the next few days to go through the wiki/website and expand on what we’ve got, and leave gaps for others to fill in where appropriate.

> I think 5 is a good number, not too long a read, and a good selection,
> there is something in there for everyone.
> 
> We might like to extend the description into an extra, deeper level,
> if you like that, please send me the blurb and I'll make a page and
> link that to the project entry.

Agreed - I’ll send you some text shortly after going through the task lists in more detail.

> 
> Let me know what you think --- the headings might look at bit uhh,
> colourful, if you prefer a different heading for the categories let me
> know.

These look fine :)

—
Dr Peter M. Kelly
pmkelly@apache.org

PGP key: http://www.kellypmk.net/pgp-key <http://www.kellypmk.net/pgp-key>
(fingerprint 5435 6718 59F0 DD1F BFA0 5E46 2523 BAA1 44AE 2966)