Non-coding project participants

[Dan Smith]

Thanks for the response. I appreciate the insight into how you see a Project wiki operating.

> On Aug 5, 2016, at 12:40 AM, dalibor topic <dalibor.topic at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
>> 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.

We'll consider this, along with alternative tools for collaboration. At this point, we're just trying to explore what our options are.

I'll point out that there remains an assumption in the mentoring model you describe that, ultimately, helpful contributors will be coders. I'm not sure that's a path that makes sense for some of our participants, no matter how engaged and active they become. (Too early to provide some concrete evidence of that, though.)

—Dan