Hi all, I''m very happy to see how quickly the Puppet community is growing and how pleasant and helpful everyone is. It seems like people are starting to handle a lot of the questions on the email lists and IRC, which is great because it means I can focus more on development and planning. There are a few areas that don''t seem to be meeting the community needs, though, and even the areas that are doing well could probably use some more organization. I''ve tried to find stories of how other communities organize, but I haven''t had much luck. So, I''ve come up with what I think the basic roles are in the community, and I''m hoping that people will take over some of these roles, especially to add more community leaders who are empowered to make larger decisions. I am very aware of how critical documentation and communication are to the future of Puppet, and I''m also aware that I haven''t done a good job with either of these, yet my attempts to do well enough have caused me to also neglect my development and planning duties. If I can empower others to make the important decisions and to channel work in constructive ways, then I should be able to be more efficient and thus get more development done (and, hopefully, communicate better as a developer), and the community will have better documentation and will more easily stay up to date. Note that I am specifically *not* trying to push the community away -- this is still my full time job times two, and there''s no way I''m stepping out of it. I just realize that I can''t do it all, and I need others to step in and help me in more official roles. I also want to make it clear that Puppet is a lot more than just development -- the documentation, the support forums, example code, testers, platform advocates and much more are all critical and don''t require an inch of Ruby in most cases. Toward that end, I''ve created a Community Roles page, providing what I think are the basic roles, along with a place to document who is handling those roles: http://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet/wiki/CommunityRoles I hope this page can be a start to building a community organization that''s self-sustaining and able to quickly respond to its own needs. I expect that I''ve over-organized, but I think the separation I''ve provided does a decent job of allowing people to volunteer just a little bit of time in a relatively focused area. I have filled in a few names, but mostly just stuck my name in there. I''ve also used cutesy but probably lame titles in most places, and I''m completely open to those being changed. In my opinion, the most important unfilled roles on that page are those related to documentation: Making sure it''s meeting the community''s needs in terms of organization and access, and making sure that "known information" makes it into the documentation in an appropriate way. For instance, I often see mail threads that bring out some important detail but don''t end up being documented, or if they''re documented, the documentation is hard enough to find that it might as well not exist, and people often ask questions on IRC that are answered in the docs but clearly not in an easily found way. Just to be clear, I''m hoping to hand off responsibility, not just work. If you think things could be better and you know how, then I''d like to give you an opportunity to show us what you''re thinking of. Puppet has already benefited immensely from people taking initiative to fix things they thought were broken; for instance, Peter Abrahamsen made the effort to move all of the documentation over to Trac, and Digant Kasundra has been maintaining the Best Practice and Style Guides, both of which help immensely. I''ll give people a couple of days to register their own interest, and if there aren''t many takers I''m going to try to hunt down those who have shown interest and initiative and see if I can get them to commit personally to some of this work. My first goal is to finish the reorganization of the documentation that Ben and I started. I''ll be writing up a document describing my basic vision behind the documentation, so if you think you''ve got ideas for how to make the docs better, I really want to hear them. Thanks! -- The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well. -- Horace Walpole --------------------------------------------------------------------- Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com
Hello all, It''s been a bit over a week since I sent out this original call for help, and we''ve gotten some people to commit to help in certain areas. Digant C Kasundra, Juri Rischel Jensen, and Jeff McCune will be making sure that the docs on the wiki are in good shape, which is a critical part of Puppet''s success. Matt Palmer will be helping with development and support, also. However, there are a couple of key areas that I haven''t seen much interest in and I would particularly like help with. One area that comes up again and again is making sure information exchanged on IRC or the mailing lists is merged into the working documentation. While these forums are a great way to figure out how to solve a problem, they do not serve well as long-term documentation, so we need people who will at least take responsibility for pushing people to document what they find, and preferably we need people to verify that the documentation is added and sufficient. This is different from managing the docs themselves because the focus is on converting from community-derived information to documentation. Another area in which I''d really like help is managing the influx of tickets. Mike B. (emails as barsalou) has volunteered to help manage this flow, but I think it best to have more than one user involved. The only real task here is to check out ticket changes and recategorizing the tickets as necessary. The first and probably most important step is to review all tickets marked Unreviewed -- are they duplicates, bugs, etc.? You''ll probably need some idea of to whom to assign the tickets, but even reviewing them to the point of assessing whether it''s a critical problem or a trivial one would be a big help. See the Django Triage process[1] for an example of what I''d like to build. I''d also really like people who are willing to try to reproduce filed bugs and use that process to figure out where the problem really is. I spend a lot of my ticket management time doing exactly this -- turning a problem report into a description of where the bug is. For instance, yesterday while reproducing #706 I discovered that the problem was related to defined types in a namespace, which was not at all where I expected the bug to be, but I spent half an hour figuring this out. For those who have volunteered to be contact points on IRC (Matt Palmer, so far) what is the best way to designate them such, so that new members know to contact them? Should their names be in the topic, should the topic point to a page saying so, or should they be channel ops? Anyone feel like creating a ''Getting help on IRC'' page on the wiki that the topic can point to? I''d also like feedback on whether this is a good way to get people involved. If you think this is too heavy handed and you have a better idea, I''m all ears. Feel free to respond directly to me, to the list, or just add yourself to one of the teams on the Community Roles page[2]. Thanks, Luke 1 - http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/contributing/ 2 - http://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet/wiki/CommunityRoles -- The easiest way to figure the cost of living is to take your income and add ten percent. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com
On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 12:06:00PM -0500, Luke Kanies wrote:> For those who have volunteered to be contact points on IRC (Matt > Palmer, so far) what is the best way to designate them such, so that > new members know to contact them? Should their names be in the > topic, should the topic point to a page saying so, or should they be > channel ops? Anyone feel like creating a ''Getting help on IRC'' page > on the wiki that the topic can point to?I''ll work on a page for that. As far as people knowing they can ping particular people for help, I don''t know if that''s a particularly good idea -- I tend to idle in the channel and won''t necessarily be directly next to my PC when I''m pinged. Ops privs aren''t a good way, either, since most chanops these days tend to take them and drop them as they need to, instead of wearing the cloak of power all the time. I think I''ve seen bots that people can ask for help, which can direct them to a person on the list of helpful people who has been active recently (to maximise the chances of getting someone who''s awake). Personally, I''m just going to set ''beep on message'' in XChat for the #puppet channel for now. I''ve been wanting to write an IRC bot for a while, though, perhaps this is my chance... - Matt -- Q: Why do Marxists only drink herbal tea? A: Because proper tea is theft. -- Chris Suslowicz, in the Monastery
On Jul 9, 2007, at 5:49 PM, Matthew Palmer wrote:> > I''ll work on a page for that.Great, thanks.> As far as people knowing they can ping particular people for help, > I don''t > know if that''s a particularly good idea -- I tend to idle in the > channel and > won''t necessarily be directly next to my PC when I''m pinged. Ops > privs > aren''t a good way, either, since most chanops these days tend to > take them > and drop them as they need to, instead of wearing the cloak of > power all the > time.Yeah, I''ve been warned that it''s bad juju to keep ops in the long term. I''ll plan on giving you (and others, as they get delegated) rights on the channel. As to not designating people on irc, I think I agree. I''ve been thinking that the key on IRC and the mailing list isn''t so much who helps people, since that''s happening automatically, it''s making sure that that help makes it into the documentation.> I think I''ve seen bots that people can ask for help, which can > direct them > to a person on the list of helpful people who has been active > recently (to > maximise the chances of getting someone who''s awake). Personally, > I''m just > going to set ''beep on message'' in XChat for the #puppet channel for > now. > I''ve been wanting to write an IRC bot for a while, though, perhaps > this is > my chance...Apparently rbot (a simple bot written in ruby) is pretty nice. It''s got quite a few useful features like being able to leave messages for people and seeing when someone was last active or seen or whatever. I''d personally like the bot to have trac integration, so we could get irc posts when a commit is bad or something like that. I''d also like to be able to use trac links (e.g., #701 for tickets or [25] for commits) and have the bot convert them to links into the Puppet trac. Let me know when you have that working. :) -- Get forgiveness now -- tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com
On 7/9/07, Luke Kanies <luke@madstop.com> wrote:> However, there are a couple of key areas that I haven''t seen much > interest in and I would particularly like help with. One area that > comes up again and again is making sure information exchanged on IRC > or the mailing lists is merged into the working documentation. While > these forums are a great way to figure out how to solve a problem, > they do not serve well as long-term documentation, so we need people > who will at least take responsibility for pushing people to document > what they find, and preferably we need people to verify that the > documentation is added and sufficient. This is different from > managing the docs themselves because the focus is on converting from > community-derived information to documentation.Do you need stuff written out or could it be a simple paste of the chat log with the correct keywords attached and maybe some links to useful wiki pages? In the case of the latter, I''m willing to do that. I''m "always-on" with my desktop at home and I can simply scan my logs daily or bi-daily to check if interesting topics were discussed and add them to the wiki. If you need prose, I''m probably not the right guy for it.> For those who have volunteered to be contact points on IRC (Matt > Palmer, so far) what is the best way to designate them such, so that > new members know to contact them?If you want official contact points, I''m volunteering. But I don''t think this position needs any "officiality", since we''re already helping wherever and whenever we can on IRC. Personally, I see no added value in having "designated contact points", every who can answers usually answers anyway. -- Gegroet, Tim
On Jul 10, 2007, at 9:49 AM, Tim Stoop wrote:> > Do you need stuff written out or could it be a simple paste of the > chat log with the correct keywords attached and maybe some links to > useful wiki pages? In the case of the latter, I''m willing to do that. > I''m "always-on" with my desktop at home and I can simply scan my logs > daily or bi-daily to check if interesting topics were discussed and > add them to the wiki.I think two things are needed -- a decision as to where the information should be documented, and then the information needs to be converted into (as you put it) prose. The first thing is why I think delegates are needed; we need people who have a basic idea of the organization of the wiki.> If you need prose, I''m probably not the right guy for it.I''m sure you''d be fine, especially since we''re mostly talking about small things (e.g., adding a note to the Debian page).> If you want official contact points, I''m volunteering. But I don''t > think this position needs any "officiality", since we''re already > helping wherever and whenever we can on IRC. Personally, I see no > added value in having "designated contact points", every who can > answers usually answers anyway.I agree. I''m changing the CommunityRoles page once I send this to remove the support contacts and just leave in the Documenters. -- Criminal: A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation. --Howard Scott --------------------------------------------------------------------- Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com