Re: Implement whatcanidoforgnome.org?"

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Sriram Ramkrishna <sri ramkrishna me> wrote:
...
> > Check this out:
> > http://diegoe.be/2014/02/24/habits-and-engagement/

Heh, Diego was using the engagement word before it was cool.

> > The video is only 20 minutes, and it's really interesting. If you have
> > extra time, also check the youtube video linked in the post.
> >
> > Bottom line is that users (or contributors) are more likely to engage
> > deeply if we help a habit to form.
> > This is easier if we make actions and rewards crystal clear and easily
> > accessible.
> >
> > I would say that this can be part of a (bit) bigger strategy. Shall we :-)?
>
> +1 from me.

I've been thinking a fair bit about enabling participation recently,
and I'm a big fan of suggesting concrete tasks that people can work
on. I also like the way that the Mozilla tool matches people to tasks
through areas of expertise (which is something we do in a less
elaborate way on the getting involved page [1]). I'm not *entirely*
sure about the design of the Mozilla site (it seems a bit gimmicky to
me), but that's probably a conversation for another time. ;)

I think we need to start at the foundation and build up though (I
think I'm in agreement with Diego here). Before we create a website
(or add to the existing one) we need to ensure that each team has a
set of concrete tasks that new contributors can work on. We will then
need to maintain this task list so the website doesn't get stale. I
believe that Tiffany was working in this area, and it would be good to
pick it up; maybe we could have a process where we review each team to
check that they have relevant tasks for new contributors.

The major challenge here, I think, is ensuring that we have
development tasks that are ready and waiting to be implemented by
contributors. Until we can point new participants to these in a
directed way ("this is Bugzilla; go wild" isn't going to work), we're
a bit stuck.

tl;dr: I like the general premise a lot, and think we should do some
groundwork first. A good first step would be to review what
opportunities there are and identify any blank spots.

Allan

[1] http://www.gnome.org/get-involved/