Non-coding project participants

[dalibor topic]

On 04.08.2016 23:17, Dan Smith wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In the Valhalla project we have some potential project participants who do not intend to submit patches to the project repositories, but would like to contribute to the project wiki, or perhaps in other non-coding ways.

Writing to a Wiki requires an Author Role or higher. See 
http://openjdk.java.net/projects/#project-author for details.
Discussing entries on a wiki just requires participation on the mailing 
list, though.

> What is the recommended process for setting up these people?

They can sign up to the mailing list and provide their feedback there.

> 1) Are there any other relevant Project roles (besides Author) for these non-coding participants?

Yes: Participant & Contributor: http://openjdk.java.net/bylaws#participant

> These potential participants can sign an OCA, but aren't inclined to make code patches (we can create busywork for them to muck around in our repo,
Yeah, that's a bad idea.

> or store documentation in the repo rather than the wiki, but these are counter-productive workarounds).

Yeah, that's probably a bad idea, as well.

>  They do, however, have a history (or can establish a history) in mailing lists of "significant contributions to [the] Project".

That seems extremely unlikely, based on prior experiences in OpenJDK.

Consider for example the Adoption Group, which has a lot of Group 
Members who are not sufficiently actively contributing code to any 
OpenJDK Project to get at least an Author Role in any of them, despite 
being Group Members of an Adoption Group for quite a long time, and yet 
can all write to its Wiki by the virtue of being its Group Members.

If you look at the edits at 
https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/Adoption/Main you'll find that 
almost no one of its members aside from myself, Rory and Martijn has 
ever edited it, despite being able to.

> 2) Are Project Leads allowed the discretion of appointing Authors who have made "significant contributions" that do not take the form of "sponsored contributions" of code?

No.

> 3) If the answers to (1) and (2) do not suggest a way forward, what should we do instead?

You should actively use the mailing list for discussions with 
Participants & Contributors, regularly soliciting their feedback  - for 
example on Wiki improvements, or other areas you feel that their 
feedback would be valuable.

That is more work than just lowering barriers to entry, and hoping for 
significant contributions from people who are "potential" participants, 
but it provides a much more valuable reward for the participation and 
contributions:

   human attention

Basically, if you want significant contributions from "potential" 
participants, you need to spend a lot of work on them and mentoring 
those participants yourself.

Just giving people who may do something someday write access on a vain 
hope that they may come through eventually with a significant 
improvement typically produces nothing of value, other than creating 
busywork for everyone involved.

cheers,
dalibor topic
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