Newcomers

The Problem of Growth

• Both of Jess's projects are now attracting new contributors
  • But nobody ever files an issue or a pull request
  • And most people don't stick around
• Part of the problem seems to be getting started
  • "By the time I was set up, I was out of time"
• Most of this material taken from [Sholler2019]

What Is a "Community"?

A community of practice [Wenger1999]:

1. Participants work on or toward a common product or purpose
2. They are mutually engaged
3. They develop shared resources and domain knowledge

Be Welcoming

• Not enough to say "anyone can contribute"
• Be proactive about fostering positive impression [Steinmacher2015]
  • Welcome messages on social media
  • Dedicated newcomers channel on Slack
  • Tag issues as suitable for beginners
  • Designated person to contact
• Have a Code of Conduct
  • Its mere existence sends a strong signal about the kind of community you are
  • Have and publish an enforcement mechanism [Aurora2019]

Mentoring

• Mentoring programs have mixed results
  • Work well for some people
  • Seem to turn others off
• Provide as an option but don't force it on people

Help People Evaluate Fit

• Saves time on both sides
• List different types of contributions and skills required
  • E.g., "Updating user's guide: needs RMarkdown"
• Note: "basic Julia skills" doesn't help
  • Your idea of "basic" can be quite different from mine

Make Governance Explicit

• Do-ocracy concentrates power in the hands of those with:
  • Good connections
  • Lots of free time
  • Lots of self-confidence
• We'll come back to this

Document on Demand

• Out-of-date documentation leads to wasted time
  • More demotivating than not having docs at all
• Guessing at what people will need is usually not productive
• So turn every question into:
  • A vignette
  • An FAQ entry
  • Source code documentation
• Archive things in a findable way
  • Mailing lists are still better than Slack for this
• Search should scan all sources at the same time
• See [Lin2020] for advice

Develop Pathways to Participation

Legitimate peripheral participation:

Newcomers become members of a community by participating in simple, low-risk tasks that further the goals of the community. Through these peripheral activities, newcomers become acquainted with the community's tasks, vocabulary, and governance so that they can ease into the project.

Develop Pathways to Participation

• Submit a bug report (versus fixing a bug)
• Help with translation and localization
• Test-drive a new tutorial
• Particularly important for people who have been excluded in the past [Ford2016]

Make It Easy to Get Started

• Create a CONTRIBUTING file
  • And test it regularly
• Its existence reassures newcomers that you care about them
• Helps experienced project members too
  • "Wait, that's changed?"

Use In-Person Interaction Carefully

• Newcomers benefit from events that offer:
  • structured pedagogy and
  • less structured periods devoted to hacks and creative projects [Huppenkothen2018]
• Best when combined with larger events to amortize travel costs

Use In-Person Interaction Carefully

• Remember that many people:
  • Are introverted
  • Have family responsibilities
  • Find travel physically challenging
  • Can't afford it
  • Can't get visas
• Don't make them feel left out
  • Have note-takers for as many activities as possible
  • Have online discussions afterward

Acknowledge All Contributions

• Gratitude and recognition are powerful incentives
  • "A programmer will do something for a laptop sticker that they would not do for a hundred dollars"
  • (If they can afford to, that is)
• Adopt and publicize guidelines about who is acknowledged where and for what
• Do not ignore "invisible" contributions
  • Code reviews don't show up in Git logs
  • We're still trying to figure this out…

Follow Up

• Check in with people immediately after their first contribution
  • Congratulate them
  • Help them find the next thing to work on
• Also check in with people who started but didn't finish
  • "What could we have done better?"
  • May also want to have an external person handle this