jessenoller.com

Over the past year or two, I’ve been in a pile of dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing attempt­ing to increase the num­ber of con­tri­bu­tions to Python (as a project and ecosys­tem) — specif­i­cally around bug fixes/patch reviews, fil­ing bugs, point­ing out doc­u­men­ta­tion issues, web­site con­tent, etc. Many of these con­ver­sa­tions seem rel­a­tively insu­lar (peo­ple already involved talk­ing about how they get work done, and how easy it is) or rel­a­tively hand-wavy (“let’s make it bet­ter! *crickets*”).

We all know that the fact is that there are plenty of areas for any­one (both pro­gram­mer and not) to con­tribute to the Python project/ecosystem, this is actu­ally true for most, if not all, open source, and open com­mu­ni­ties out there. While I am look­ing at this through the myopic lens of Python-core, the same dis­cus­sion could be applied anywhere.

In the dis­cus­sions I’ve had on mail­ing lists, and in pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple about why they don’t con­tribute, I’ve found a set of recur­ring issues cited by peo­ple who could be con­trib­u­tors, roughly speak­ing these are:

• Don’t know how (doc­u­men­ta­tion issue)
• Don’t know where (site lay­out, orga­ni­za­tion issue)
• Don’t want to fight/argue with the “but this is the way we’ve always done it” peo­ple (per­cep­tion issue)
• For many issues, see check­out (svn), build (learn a “new” build sys­tem), run tests/write tests, gen­er­ate patch, file bug, defend bug as a “high bar” (process/tool issue)
• Don’t feel that they’ll be val­ued (per­cep­tion issue)
• Can’t invest the time to learn the tool chain(s) (make, ReST, regrtest, svnmerge/svndiff, sphinx, etc) (I got nothin here)

And so on.

What inter­ests me more than the things I’ve listed about (which is a dis­til­la­tion of months of dis­cus­sions) is what, if any­thing, pre­vents you, my reader(s) from con­tribut­ing to the fol­low­ing areas:

• Fil­ing bug reports (includ­ing the stdlib and documentation)
• Fil­ing patches for bugs/improvements (includ­ing the stdlib and documentation)
• Fix­ing issues/sending patches on web­site content
• Propos­ing new web­site or doc­u­men­ta­tion content
• Con­tribut­ing to web­site maintenance
• Con­tribut­ing to the Documentation

And any­thing else you can think of. What I’m ask­ing for, is for you to give me thoughts, ideas and feed­back on how we can lower the bar and reduce the fric­tion of any of this so that you too can help out. Every­thing is fair game, even “I find the method of argu­ing for PEPs to cause lower intesti­nal irri­ta­tion” (although, I hope to get more con­struc­tive com­ments than that).

Here’s the rea­son I’m asking/reaching out — I firmly, and totally believe that every sin­gle per­son who uses Python today can become a con­trib­u­tor to the project and ecosys­tem beyond that of a user. While it is true that philo­soph­i­cally, every­one who uses Python is con­tribut­ing, I would like to see if we can make it so that even the most “basic” user feels that they can file a bug, sub­mit a patch, fix the doc­u­men­ta­tion, fix/add web­site con­tent, etc.

Much like I think any­one can, and should be empow­ered to con­tribute back to the “Python Project” — I believe the cul­ture of “every­one con­tributes” is an impor­tant one. Cit­ing the won­der­ful keynote from PyCon 2010 by Anto­nio Rodriguez (video here), I main­tain this is should be a goal for every­one, not just com­pa­nies — but open source projects as well.

There are lots of things we can change/fix/improve — but before we can do that, we have to be able to iden­tify the “bugs” in what we have now. Do we need a giant flow­chart with flash­ing text (I joke!) or do we need sim­pli­fied “how do I…” text to the web­site? Everything’s fair game (except “just put it on github”).

So, do you have any thoughts? If you don’t feel com­fort­able air­ing them pub­licly, you can email com­ments to jnoller at (gmail.com|python.org) as you see fit. I promise not to share any iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion, but I reserve the right to share the feed­back you pro­vide, albeit anony­mously. I also promise to ask mean­ing­ful ques­tions so I can squir­rel out more detail if needed.

Over the past year or two, I've been in a pile of discussions surrounding attempting to increase the number of contributions to Python (as a project and ecosystem) - specifically around bug fixes/patch reviews, filing bugs, pointing out documentation issues, website content, etc. Many of these conversations seem relatively insular (people already involved talking ...