What first attracted you to contributing to Dreamwidth?
(Wow, feels like it was so long ago that I can't possibly remember, but let me try.) The biggest draw for me was that I liked the principles behind DW-the-project, so I wanted to help build DW-the-site so that I could have a good solid online home.
I also jumped at the chance to fix some of the things (small things! big things! some were code -- bugs that might take less than an hour to fix, but that no one else had had the time to dig into, or shambling horrors of the deep; some were policy -- ads, nudge, etc) that frustrated me. Plus there was talk of shiny new features.
Umm, so basically, I knew I'd be using DW every day, I like it when my user experience improves even if (especially if?) I have to jump in and do it myself. And if it meant that I'd also have fun while doing so, well so much the better!
What are some of the things that we (the DW project maintainers) did to make you feel welcome?
You guys let me know that you appreciate me / my contributions :-D
Also, I really appreciate that most of the important discussions will happen in bugzilla or a community (occasionally email) rather than requiring real-time meetings via IRC. It's one of the things that I've found difficult in every other project I've volunteered for, and as a point of practicality I've always tried to shrug it off as one of those things that just happens... and I really, really, appreciate finding out that it's possible to be otherwise.
What's the best thing we did to help you get up to speed and contribute effectively?
This ties in to there being no stigma attached to questions. I may not always be able to get an answer immediately, but I don't feel that my questions are belittled, so I was rarely blocked by that.
Decent documentation (wiki!).
Was there anything in particular, big or small, that made you decide that DW was the kind of project you wanted to contribute to?
(this whole section was originally in reply to what you guys did to make me feel welcome; transplanted down here when I realized it fit this question better)
Well, trusted me to submit patches :-) Positive reinforcement (praise, cheering, thanks *G*) when I've coded up a much-requested feature, or much-awaited bugfix, or you know, wrote up some really nice code or cleanup.
Polite rejection of my patches if something was wrong (so I could stop worrying that I'd somehow break the site... oh, anxiety :-)) -- but please note the polite. I mean, there's no way to absolutely erase the "oh crap, rejected D:", and it's only natural, but the way that the patches are rejected went a long way towards giving me the courage to resubmit (especially when I was new to this whole submitting patches thing. It's less of an issue for me *now*)
Promoted a stimulating, fun environment where I could concentrate on code (or hanging out, or whatever) with minimal aggressive competition (perhaps a slightly stronger term... dick-waving?) and without politicking. Made it easy to ask questions -- no shame attached to the asking. Also, I love that when, say, there's a question that's been repeated multiple times, the response is that something must be wrong with our documentation or our process (not the questioner) -- now what can we do to fix it? Thinking in particular of how we've been handling installation issues and questions that people occasionally ask on IRC.
Cleanup welcome; small bugs and small bugfixes are welcome alongside the larger overarching systemic stuff. Bug reports and suggestions are welcomed because if it has bothered someone enough that they bring it to our attention, then there are likely more people who noticed but just grumbled and went on their way. If we know about it, we can fix it. (Versus: a bug report is the reporter being a pain in the neck / it works for me just fine the way it is, now shut up and enjoy what's in front of you)
If you've had experience on other OSS projects, what makes DW different? Better? (Worse?)
I've been part of three other OSS projects before (one of these for work), and DW is one of the friendliest to newcomers, questions, and bug reports that I've seen, along with OTW. The others I've worked on aren't actively unfriendly, mind; just that you'd generally need to invest a lot more effort before you could start taking part.
Based on casual browsing of some other bug trackers, there *are* some pretty unfriendly projects out there, but I don't have much experience with those, because I don't really have the time/energy to get past the unfriendliness and find out what I need to do to contribute.
I don't think these are representative of all projects, but I see them often enough (in varying degrees) that the friendliness of DW really does stand out.
What's your favorite part about the DW project culture?
Friendliness and willingness to improve (code, process, etc).
Do you have any good stories to share about awesome moments?
Know I have them, but can't think of one right now; resisting urge to dig into qdb.
What are some of the things you've learned, both technical and otherwise, while working on DW that you don't think you would have learned otherwise?
More Perl? *laughs* So, when I started volunteering for DW, I didn't actually know much Perl. I knew enough to read it and be able to pick out potential causes for bugs, but I had very little experience actually writing it. I've also learned a great deal about designing modules from scratch. Most of my prior experience was tweaking small sections of code, or adding a new feature heavily based on another feature. The invite codes module, which I worked on along with Pau, was my first taste of doing something from scratch for real world use.
I've picked up a better understanding of performance / performance issues / design / security, from the (mostly unconscious now?) considerations by Mark, etc, built into the code. I'm even following suit and commenting my code a bit better nowadays (hehehe).
On the less technical side, I feel more confident in my coding skills, and even in my ability to lead (it's... not my favorite thing in the world, but I can see the necessity).
no subject
(Wow, feels like it was so long ago that I can't possibly remember, but let me try.) The biggest draw for me was that I liked the principles behind DW-the-project, so I wanted to help build DW-the-site so that I could have a good solid online home.
I also jumped at the chance to fix some of the things (small things! big things! some were code -- bugs that might take less than an hour to fix, but that no one else had had the time to dig into, or shambling horrors of the deep; some were policy -- ads, nudge, etc) that frustrated me. Plus there was talk of shiny new features.
Umm, so basically, I knew I'd be using DW every day, I like it when my user experience improves even if (especially if?) I have to jump in and do it myself. And if it meant that I'd also have fun while doing so, well so much the better!
What are some of the things that we (the DW project maintainers) did to make you feel welcome?
You guys let me know that you appreciate me / my contributions :-D
Also, I really appreciate that most of the important discussions will happen in bugzilla or a community (occasionally email) rather than requiring real-time meetings via IRC. It's one of the things that I've found difficult in every other project I've volunteered for, and as a point of practicality I've always tried to shrug it off as one of those things that just happens... and I really, really, appreciate finding out that it's possible to be otherwise.
What's the best thing we did to help you get up to speed and contribute effectively?
This ties in to there being no stigma attached to questions. I may not always be able to get an answer immediately, but I don't feel that my questions are belittled, so I was rarely blocked by that.
Decent documentation (wiki!).
Was there anything in particular, big or small, that made you decide that DW was the kind of project you wanted to contribute to?
(this whole section was originally in reply to what you guys did to make me feel welcome; transplanted down here when I realized it fit this question better)
Well, trusted me to submit patches :-) Positive reinforcement (praise, cheering, thanks *G*) when I've coded up a much-requested feature, or much-awaited bugfix, or you know, wrote up some really nice code or cleanup.
Polite rejection of my patches if something was wrong (so I could stop worrying that I'd somehow break the site... oh, anxiety :-)) -- but please note the polite. I mean, there's no way to absolutely erase the "oh crap, rejected D:", and it's only natural, but the way that the patches are rejected went a long way towards giving me the courage to resubmit (especially when I was new to this whole submitting patches thing. It's less of an issue for me *now*)
Promoted a stimulating, fun environment where I could concentrate on code (or hanging out, or whatever) with minimal aggressive competition (perhaps a slightly stronger term... dick-waving?) and without politicking. Made it easy to ask questions -- no shame attached to the asking. Also, I love that when, say, there's a question that's been repeated multiple times, the response is that something must be wrong with our documentation or our process (not the questioner) -- now what can we do to fix it? Thinking in particular of how we've been handling installation issues and questions that people occasionally ask on IRC.
Cleanup welcome; small bugs and small bugfixes are welcome alongside the larger overarching systemic stuff. Bug reports and suggestions are welcomed because if it has bothered someone enough that they bring it to our attention, then there are likely more people who noticed but just grumbled and went on their way. If we know about it, we can fix it. (Versus: a bug report is the reporter being a pain in the neck / it works for me just fine the way it is, now shut up and enjoy what's in front of you)
If you've had experience on other OSS projects, what makes DW different? Better? (Worse?)
I've been part of three other OSS projects before (one of these for work), and DW is one of the friendliest to newcomers, questions, and bug reports that I've seen, along with OTW. The others I've worked on aren't actively unfriendly, mind; just that you'd generally need to invest a lot more effort before you could start taking part.
Based on casual browsing of some other bug trackers, there *are* some pretty unfriendly projects out there, but I don't have much experience with those, because I don't really have the time/energy to get past the unfriendliness and find out what I need to do to contribute.
I don't think these are representative of all projects, but I see them often enough (in varying degrees) that the friendliness of DW really does stand out.
What's your favorite part about the DW project culture?
Friendliness and willingness to improve (code, process, etc).
Do you have any good stories to share about awesome moments?
Know I have them, but can't think of one right now; resisting urge to dig into qdb.
What are some of the things you've learned, both technical and otherwise, while working on DW that you don't think you would have learned otherwise?
More Perl? *laughs* So, when I started volunteering for DW, I didn't actually know much Perl. I knew enough to read it and be able to pick out potential causes for bugs, but I had very little experience actually writing it. I've also learned a great deal about designing modules from scratch. Most of my prior experience was tweaking small sections of code, or adding a new feature heavily based on another feature. The invite codes module, which I worked on along with Pau, was my first taste of doing something from scratch for real world use.
I've picked up a better understanding of performance / performance issues / design / security, from the (mostly unconscious now?) considerations by Mark, etc, built into the code. I'm even following suit and commenting my code a bit better nowadays (hehehe).
On the less technical side, I feel more confident in my coding skills, and even in my ability to lead (it's... not my favorite thing in the world, but I can see the necessity).