I stumbled on this article today: http://sarah.thesharps.us/2015/10/06/what-makes-a-good-community/ I think the author brings up some good points. I tried to share this on /r/haskell, perhaps unsuccessfully: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/3nw9dh/what_makes_a_good_community... I'm hoping that this list is a better place to discuss the points made in that article. Below are my thoughts (mostly copied from reddit). My point with bringing this up is to help us improve our community. It's not meant to unfairly criticize the actions of any particular person or anything like that. I like Haskell and I want our community to be the best that it can be. Are there specific things within reach that we could adopt from the examples in the article? I think we largely have level 0 and 1 down. It looks like level 2 where we start to loose our footing. Level 2: meaningful contributions The next step is figuring out what to do with these eager new diverse
candidates. If they’ve made it this far through the gauntlet of toxic tech culture, they’re likely to be persistent, smart, and seeking a challenge. If you don’t have meaningful bigger projects for them to contribute to, they’ll move onto the next shiny thing. Signs of a level 2 welcoming community:
* Newbie todo lists
* Larger, self-contained projects * Welcoming, available mentors * Programs to pay newbies (internships, summer of code, etc) * Contributors are thanked with heartfelt sincerity and an explicit acknowledgment of what was good and what could be improved * Community creates a casual feedback channel for generating ideas with newcomers (irc, mailing list, slack, whatever works) * Code of conduct encourages developers to assume good intent
We use the google summer of code as a way to pay/mentor new contributors, but I think we need more mentors and more newbie friendly projects. Just need to make it happen, I guess. Also, it looks like we incorporate some of the Level 3 things too, with committee rotations. Thanks for your time, Jason