Could PW benefit from mentoring programs like GSoC?

[Beluga]

It has become apparent that these days there are open source mentoring opportunities non-stop. I'm a member of the LibreOffice quality assurance team and we have collected all the current programs we have found for possible future participation: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Mentoring_Programs

Joomla & Drupal regularly enter Google programs like Summer of Code and Code-in.

Is the ProcessWire developer community starting to be in a position where it could mentor students in these types of programs?

Or are they irrelevant to PW?

The next opportunity could be VALS Semester of Code for the next semester. They use a system of rewarding university students with study credits.

[pwired]

What about setting something up to teach how to make more out of the pw api ?

[Ivan Gretsky]

I do not know of any organization related to PW other than Ryan Cramer Design, which might be a one man enterprise (do not know anything about it). There is this forum community with admin team organised somehow (do not have any info on this either). There are people taking care of this forum software (seem like Pete is one of them or the only one of them). I can imagine mentoring programs require someone to organise mentoring, and it is likely we do not have no organised structures to cope with that. Ryan seems to be pretty busy with his outstanding job developing Processwire and probably doing some custom web design and development.

My opinion is that the time is right for ProcessWire community to become more organised. There are tasks for organised community which have not been covered yet like:

• maintaining modules directory up to date, qulifying modules to it;
• organizing translation activities;
• making recomendations on the roadmap;
• actually doing some development to help Ryan;
• doing some marketing;
• writing and maintaining some documentation on PW;
• and mentorin talented folks of course )

I do not know how it could or should be done. I do not know anyone else's intentions on that, but it seems like some people here are willing to take part in those kind of activities (myself included).

[Beluga]

Thanks for a very constructive post, Ivan!

• organizing translation activities;

This has got to be one of the lowest-hanging fruits.

Weblate is ready for us:

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/8389-centralized-translation-of-processwire-and-pw-documentations/

https://github.com/PW4ALL/ProcessWire-Weblate

[teppo]

@Ivan: you've got some very good points there. At the very least these are things that should be mentioned somewhere; for most parts the situation isn't quite as "unorganised" as it apparently seems

You're right in that Ryan Cramer Design is the only company "officially" behind ProcessWire, but we do also have some corporate sponsors, such as Avoine. Programs like the ones mentioned here could still be a bit problematic for us, as those probably work best when there's a larger company behind the system, but I'm not an expert on this, so what do I know.

About your other points, the forum has a dedicated moderating team, and there's some kind of a process for most of the things you've mentioned. Regarding the roadmap, for an example, anyone can make recommendations; that's what Wishlist & Roadmap is for. Modules directory is currently managed by Ryan, and a lot of folks contribute to ProcessWire, though at the end of the day all core contributions go through Ryan's hands (intentionally).

We're also already doing a lot of marketing, though it's often somewhat subtle; word of mouth, comments here and there, articles, videos, and blog posts. ProcessWire Weekly, ProcessWire Recipes, ProcessWire.tv, isit.pw, and many other sites and projects are geared towards getting the word out there too.

Sure, we can (and should) do even more, but just wanted to point out that a lot of stuff is already happening

[Beluga]

Programs like the ones mentioned here could still be a bit problematic for us, as those probably work best when there's a larger company behind the system

All it takes is a team that is organized and mentors with free time and dedication.

[Ivan Gretsky]

@teppo: In no way am I critisizing, but rather offering. All that you mentioned is well known to me as well as probably to everyone participating in the discussion. And I do understand that you bringing that up for people not aware of all that awesone activities around PW (and I think you are doing what should be done).

The future of PW as a community as well as a software is of significant interest to me as I rely on both as means to make a living. And as a way to live too (in some respect of course). I thought that the question of the topic just requires this broader context of PW commuity current situation to be unswered. And took this chance to speak my mind))

[Beluga]

For a great example of a solid team organization, please see the menu bar here with Development, Design, QA, etc.: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Main_Page

The team pages list communication channels, active team members, roles and responsibilities, documents and resources.. The onboarding process is very smooth and documented.

[teppo]

@Ivan, that's good to hear. Didn't think that you'd be criticising either (sorry if it sounded like that), just wanted to address some of the points you listed as "tasks for organised community which have not been covered yet". I most definitely appreciate what you're saying -- and, like I said, you've made some very good points

What I meant to convey was mainly that many of such tasks are handled already, we just haven't listed (or gathered) any official teams for specific tasks -- other than the forum moderating team, in a way. There are also named people taking care of some specific tasks, such as approving sites directory entries, but those probably haven't been listed anywhere publicly either.

It's true that perhaps we should have named teams, and make it obvious who's responsible for what. We've mainly been trying to avoid creating any unnecessary structures and (harmful) bureaucracy, but things like the community rules and guidelines are already an obvious step towards being more organised, and we've always tried to make it obvious who you should contact if in any doubt.

Either way we're still a relatively small community, and we don't want to (or need to) act any bigger than we are. Doesn't mean that we won't act when it's time for that, of course, and I personally see discussions like this as valuable indicators about whether we should already do something "in a bigger way"

[Ivan Gretsky]

I am really new to internet communities around software (or about anything else really). So I do not know how they can or should be organized (or should they - maybe some sort of anarchy is a way to go here). I do not know how PW community is organised as there are almost no written material about it. That's why I assume it is not organized (except for the moderating team, which was probably picked by most activity on the forum by Ryan).

When I see community rules and guidelines I do not even know if they come from a "legal authority" or are just an opinion of an individual or a draft. I just can see Ryan liked them))

Not so long ago I participated in a discussion about cenrtralized translations for PW mentioned by Beluga a few posts above. We ended up with some questions we could not address on our own. I do not know if we could do anything else there: maybe we could write PM to someone to clear things up. As noone did step in to the discussion we just abandoned it for now. If we (who?) were targeted at community building we could easily get a working translation group there.

I heard about do-ocracy, but not sure it can fully apply here as Ryan mentioned several times that he sees this community as not leaderless (and it is obviously not, as most of the development is made by him). Thats why I imagine we should define some procecces to involve people in activiries around PW in a centric organised manner (maybe I am not being clear, but it is hart talking politics in a language that is not your first one ).

[Ivan Gretsky]

What I meant to convey was mainly that many of such tasks are handled already, we just haven't listed (or gathered) any official teams for specific tasks -- other than the forum moderating team, in a way. There are also named people taking care of some specific tasks, such as approving sites directory entries, but those probably haven't been listed anywhere publicly either.

Your words indicate that some sort of organisation (probably informal and more like a friends circle) is already in place, but is unknown to majority forum users. I guess that there are some channels of communications other than public support forum that lead to it. I think you are right - making it public is a good idea. We (the broader community) could use it to address issues and organize volunteers around. 

[Beluga]

Your words indicate that some sort of organisation (probably informal and more like a friends circle) is already in place, but is unknown to majority forum users.

This is what the OpenHatch people call implicit knowledge in a project.

https://us.pycon.org/2015/schedule/presentation/346/

open source is full of implicit knowledge that needs to be made explicit. That may mean documenting your toolchain, telling a maintainer what skills you’d like to work on, or setting expectations on how much time you have to work with someone. In open source, there’s seldom too much information.

If you guys have some free time, I suggest looking at what OpenHatch does. Many times people dismiss it as unnecessary, but I strongly disagree.

[teppo]

[...] maybe I am not being clear, but it is hart talking politics in a language that is not your first one ).

Don't worry -- you've made yourself more than clear, and I agree with pretty much everything you've said here too. Very good points, and hopefully we can address some of them soon