Hi,
During MiniDebConf in Hamburg, I had an interesting conversation about
the question of how we can attract more people to contribute to Debian
infrastructure projects. There seems to be some consensus that such
infrastructure projects are the ones in Debian that most badly need
more contributors. [1]
At the same time, our infrastructure projects/teams have a rather high
entry barrier. Apparently, one reason is that understaffed teams with
high workload usually lack the time and ressources to mentor new
contributors.
At the same time we have a fantastic entrance area for new contributors
when it comes to packaging questions: the debian-mentors channels (IRC
channel and mailinglist) both stand out with a nice and welcoming
atmosphere that actively encourages new contributors to ask their questions.
So here's the idea we came up with: We could explicitely broaden the
scope of debian-mentors to include any questions regarding Debian
infrastructure software.
That basicly would mean to explicitely mention "questions on
infrastruc-ture projects" in our docs about debian-mentors.
Additionally, when the infrastructure teams don't have time to mentor
new contributors, they could point them to debian-mentors.
My hope is that having debian-mentors as an endorsed entry point for
diving into Debian infrastructure would lower the entry barrier
significantly for new contributors who'd like to dive into our
infrastructure software projects.
What do you think about this proposal?
Cheers
jonas
[1] Let me give two examples for such "infrastructure projects":
*/ Many in Debian agree that Debbugs could need some love, but still
it's developed and maintained largely by one brave soul.
*/ The concept of bikeshed keeps popping up for years and usually
gets a lot of affirmation. Still, only one developer worked on it so
far and nobody else stepped up to implement a working solution.
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