Re: Pondering a Welcome Team (Was: New contributor experience)
Hi Daniel,
Am Sun, Jun 01, 2025 at 10:34:23PM +0200 schrieb Daniel Gröber:
> On Fri, May 30, 2025 at 05:03:40PM +0200, Joachim Zobel wrote:
> > I just wanted to add that there is also an emotional aspect to this. I
> > offered help and was ignored. So as a result I feel rejected with a
> > general "if they don't want me they can get on without me" shrug.
>
> I feel you. Had the same experience coming into Debian and I've abandoned
> contributing to other projects on account of similar experiences in the
> past.
>
> So you're certainly not alone in feeling like this.
>
> > Also I am aware that this is _nonsense_ - no response probably means
> > there simply was nobody - the feeling of being rejected is still there.
>
> I'm glad you decided to reach out and share your experience instead of
> going for a silent exit as I'm sure many others do in this situation <3.
+1
> I've been thinking about this overall problem for a while now. Since
> several technical solutions I've considered seem organizationally
> un-viable, for the time being anayway, I've been pondering starting a
> "Welcome Team".
This is another wording for "There is no technical solution for a
social problem". ;-) I'd be more than happy if we could find some
working solution.
> We would identify interactions of new people across the whole project by
> subscribing a bot to maaaaaany maling lists and as much of salsa as we can
> without getting hit over the head by admins ;-).
Hmmm, sounds tricky.
> Then flag and review those interactions that don't elicit a (human)
> response within some reasonable time and attempt to guide contributors to
> the right place to get help.
>
> Given the unfortunate fact we don't see that many newcomers anyway this
> doesn't seem like too impossible a task using some light email and salsa
> API tooling. I've been meaning to build something fun with mblaze(7) since
> I found it anyhow :-).
This rather sound also like technical attempts for a solution.
> Thoughts anyone?
By all means, if we have volunteers who feel dedicated to guiding
newcomers, that's great and very welcome. In my experience, the best
path into Debian is often through a smaller, focused subgroup — one that
aligns with the newcomer's technical interests. Within these groups,
people tend to know each other better, which can make it easier to
notice and support newcomers and their needs early on.
I'm not convinced that creating a formal "Welcome Team" will solve the
broader issue. Instead, those who feel inclined to support newcomers can
already make a big difference by being approachable and kind — as we
sometimes already see happening quite successfully (though admittedly,
not always consistently).
> PS: Attempting to move replies to d-project@ let's see if my email-foo is
> strong today.
Didn't work in my client but I manually sent to d-project.
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
https://fam-tille.de
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