Adding new Adoption Group Members

[dalibor topic]

With roughly one year since the creation of this Group behind us, it's 
almost about the first time that we can begin to consider adding new 
Group Members. As the guidelines for adding new Group Members say, [0]

  "As a rough guide, a Contributor should be regularly active in a Group 
or its sponsored Projects for at least a year before being nominated to 
be a Group Member."

So the first question to answer is: What does being active mean?

We had a discussion of what being active means when we started to 
document this Group's activities for the purpose of compiling its 
Quarterly Reports. [1] In short, being active means one or more of

a) editing the Group's wiki
b) actively participating in conversations on the Group's mailing lists
c) being active in the Group's sponsored Projects

For any Group, a) is not going to be an interesting activity to consider 
when evaluating the activity of potential new Group Members, as only 
Group Members can edit a Group's wiki.

In the case of the Adoption Group, c) is not interesting for this 
purpose either, as this Group does not sponsor any Projects (so far). [2]

That leaves b) as the criterion to apply. There is only one mailing list 
to consider: this one. So that's actually rather easy.

The next question is, what constitutes regular activity?

Or, in the case of the mailing lists, how often should a Contributor 
actively participate in conversations to be considered regularly active 
in the Group?

This Group's Quarterly Reports give us a rough idea about the level of 
activity on the mailing lists - they range from 128 mails in the first 
quarter of 2014 to 136 in the last. Roughly speaking, that's about 1-1.5 
mails per day.

The number of Participants (excluding current Group Members) actively 
taking part in this Group's discussions has ranged from 10 in the first 
quarter of 2014 to 14 in the last.

One would expect a regularly active Participant desiring to become a 
Group Member to beat the average, so they should be active on the list 
at least every 10-21 days. In other words, they'd have sent at least 2-3 
e-mails to the list every month for a year, related to the Group's 
mission & activities.

So, let's look at the data from the mailing list archives to see if we 
have any potential candidates with 2, or 3 regular postings to their belt:

For January 2015 (so far [3]), Chris (3 posts) and Balchandra (6) would 
meet the minimal bar. For December, Ben (5) & Balchandra (8) would meet 
it. For November, it would be Patrick (8) & Balchandra (6). And so on.

What one can see from the data is that activity is not something most 
Participants sustain on a regular basis.

To some degree, that is to be expected in open source communities in 
general, and an Adoption Group in particular, which acts as a 
pass-through channel for new Participants to other Projects.

What the data suggests though, is that there won't be very many new 
candidates for Group Members for a while. Rather than lowering the 
standards of what constitutes regular activity in the Adoption Group, 
I'd suggest drawing a line at what constitutes 'minimal viable activity' 
on the mailing lists for Contributors who wish to become this Group's 
Members, and writing it down on the wiki.

cheers,
dalibor topic

[0] http://openjdk.java.net/groups/#group-member
[1] 
http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/adoption-discuss/2014-February/000065.html
[2] http://openjdk.java.net/census#adoption
[3] 
http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/adoption-discuss/2015-January/author.html#start
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