There’s a constant urge to bring new contributors to FOSS communities. A lot of it is obviously because of the open-source and free characteristic of these communities. However, FOSS communities need new blood for much more than just help with their code issue and volunteer work.
Analyzing how new contributors feel when trying to immerse themselves in a community brought the need to document and expose it here. FOSS communities are so full of the same kind of people, tech-oriented, contributors to other similar communities, that a human factor to integrate new users is failing. This becomes clear when reviewing all the doubts from Outreachy Applicants that come to me (and I’m not even a mentor).
What I see is two different things:
- A friendly, welcoming speech;
- Frightening documentation;
People in these communities are often volunteering and overwhelmed with their own share of projects from the community. It’s natural that they don’t get the time to hold an applicant’s hand and guide them through all the processes. Therefore, all that new contributors can count on are the tutorials and documentation provided by said community. And there is where the breaking point is happening.
Slightly outdated documentation sometimes is unavoidable, and we can give it a free pass when it comes to FOSS communities. Nonetheless, when the introductory documentation is scattered among different sources/Websites or when it doesn’t have a clear path to be followed, it demotivates new contributors.
To document something is a human equivalent of holding someone’s hand and giving this person a tour through our main activities and interests. Are we even doing it as a FOSS community? Are we enabling easy and clear paths for new contributors? Or do they feel constantly lost? Agonizing because they feel like it doesn’t matter how much they read they can’t grasp how the community works?
FOSS communities need new blood to get out of all the tech-related tasks and reconnect with humanity. We need to understand that our flow as a particular community can be completely different from another, and it can be extremely confusing.
So the question is: How can we make it better? How can we be the most human possible with newcomers?
What about we stop thinking as veterans in the community, assuming that certain things are ‘obvious’, and begin documenting this properly?
- Do we need to chart a process flow so an applicant understands better the steps to contribute? Let’s do it!
- Can we centralize all our initial guide at one place to make it easier? Awesome!
- Is it possible to turn the reading process less time consuming using UML diagrams and mind maps? Great!
This is the kind of worry that a FOSS community needs to have. New contributors’ insight is very important to reach that point where an introduction process gets organic and natural. And as communities that depend on new people, we so desperately need to think like that.
I’m not talking about new, small/growing communities. This is a generalized problem. From giant communities to small ones. Applicants get so frustrated because they don’t feel a natural clear process to be immersed in the community. I have been seeing people giving up Outreachy helping FOSS communities because of this problem.
We need to change how we document, we need to understand how important it is to have organic and welcoming documentation. We need to begin giving more value to our Writers. Because documentation can change experiences and help FOSS communities grow even more.
Copy?
Over.
Girls Can Do I.T. 