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Pondering a Welcome Team (Was: New contributor experience)

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  Pondering a Welcome Team (Was: New contributor experience) Daniel Gröber <dxld@darkboxed.org> - 2025-06-01 22:40 +0200
    Re: Pondering a Welcome Team Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2025-06-02 08:00 +0200
    Re: Pondering a Welcome Team (Was: New contributor experience) Joachim Zobel <jz-2017@heute-morgen.de> - 2025-06-02 11:30 +0200
    Re: Pondering a Welcome Team (Was: New contributor experience) Tiago Bortoletto Vaz <tiago@debian.org> - 2025-06-02 16:20 +0200
      Re: Pondering a Welcome Team (Was: New contributor experience) Daniel Gröber <dxld@darkboxed.org> - 2025-06-02 19:10 +0200
        Re: Pondering a Welcome Team (Was: New contributor experience) Antonio Terceiro <terceiro@debian.org> - 2025-06-02 22:40 +0200
    Re: Pondering a Welcome Team (Was: New contributor experience) Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2025-06-03 18:30 +0200
      Re: Pondering a Welcome Team (Was: New contributor experience) Daniel Gröber <dxld@darkboxed.org> - 2025-06-04 17:30 +0200
        Re: Pondering a Welcome Team (Was: New contributor experience) Joachim Zobel <jzobel@heute-morgen.de> - 2025-06-04 17:50 +0200

#13831 — Pondering a Welcome Team (Was: New contributor experience)

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Hai Joachim,

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.


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".

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 ;-).

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 :-).

Thoughts anyone?

--Daniel

PS: Attempting to move replies to d-project@ let's see if my email-foo is
strong today.

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#13832 — Re: Pondering a Welcome Team

On Sun, 1 Jun 2025 22:34:23 +0200, Daniel Gröber <dxld@darkboxed.org>
wrote:
>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.

I have abandoned contributing to projects (even Debian
subprojects/packages) for writing a well explained, solidly founded
usecase, filing a wishlist request and then being told I'm just
holding the software wrong and my usecase is <derogatory term
deleted>.

Greetings
Marc
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marc Haber         |   " Questions are the         | Mailadresse im Header
Rhein-Neckar, DE   |     Beginning of Wisdom "     | 
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 6224 1600402

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#13833

Am Sonntag, dem 01.06.2025 um 22:34 +0200 schrieb Daniel Gröber:
> 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.

I also had successful interactions with Debian. But especially during
the first one (I packaged some rarely used math) there was a friendly
and helpful _person_.

Something that should also be noted is that a mailing list does not
constitute a team as developers know it from commercial projects. This
may be confusing to new contributors. 

Sincerely,
Joachim

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#13834

Hi,

On Sun, Jun 01, 2025 at 10:34:23PM +0200, Daniel Gröber wrote:
> Hai Joachim,
> 
> 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 That's very much appreciated. Also thanks for, despite the bad
feelings, sharing your frustration in a balanced and direct way.

> 
> 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".

See https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Welcome/. It seems there is already a
"Welcome Team" (I've just joined the channel). It would be helpful if
someone from the team could share their typical approach when dealing
with (and to avoid) such situations.

> [...]

> 
> PS: Attempting to move replies to d-project@ let's see if my email-foo is
> strong today.

I'm moving this to d-project@ only.

Bests,

--
Tiago Bortoletto Vaz

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#13835

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On Mon, Jun 02, 2025 at 10:03:23AM -0400, Tiago Bortoletto Vaz wrote:
> > 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".
> 
> See https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Welcome/. It seems there is already a
> "Welcome Team" (I've just joined the channel). It would be helpful if
> someone from the team could share their typical approach when dealing
> with (and to avoid) such situations.

Oh! Indeed. I knew about this name conflict at some point and forgot :-).

From what I gather vision of the current team is to be a passive point of
contact where mine is actively seeking out people that seem to need help.

--Daniel

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#13836

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On Mon, Jun 02, 2025 at 06:59:21PM +0200, Daniel Gröber wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 02, 2025 at 10:03:23AM -0400, Tiago Bortoletto Vaz wrote:
> > > 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".
> > 
> > See https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Welcome/. It seems there is already a
> > "Welcome Team" (I've just joined the channel). It would be helpful if
> > someone from the team could share their typical approach when dealing
> > with (and to avoid) such situations.
> 
> Oh! Indeed. I knew about this name conflict at some point and forgot :-).
> 
> From what I gather vision of the current team is to be a passive point of
> contact where mine is actively seeking out people that seem to need help.

Adding this perspective of actively looking for newcomers coming through
different channels is not necessarily contradictory to what that group
is currenly doing, you might want to join them and discuss your idea
anyway.

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#13841

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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#13842

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Hi Andreas,

Nice to see you in this thread. I guess this counts against my promise to
raise this issue on the MLs a while ago ;-)

On Tue, Jun 03, 2025 at 05:52:06PM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > 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.

You know. I hate this way to frame organizational problem solving. It's
hardly ever accurate or helpful.

Isn't email just a technical attempt at the social problem of long-distance
estrangement? Maybe we should go back to semaphores or smoke signals.

[Now I wonder if history knows flamewars on those mediums :D]

> > 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.

I don't think so. It already sends out slews of emails shouldn't make much
of a difference. I had a quick look at the [gitlab code] and while there
doesn't seem to be a convenient setting to dump all (public) notification
mail somewhere I don't see an obvious scaling limit to user notifications.

[gitlab code]: Start at services/notification_service.rb and trace from
there. NotificationRecipients::BuildService.build_recipients is most
relevant.

The polling required to keeping the bot subscribed to all public repos
could be a limiting factor, but since new project don't spring up that
quickly I doubt it'll end up being a problem.

Where there's an organizational will there's a technical way.

Historically we have MLs for archiving archive/BTS changes
(d-changes@l.d.o, d-bugs-dist@l.d.o) so why not also for salsa anyway?

Seems to be a serious gap in our email centric workflow and archiving story
to me :-).

> > 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.

Hardly. The strategy is human centric with technical augmentations :-).

To be clear: I'm not suggesting we should automate the reach out, only the
search&highlight aspects.

> > 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.

Exactly my thinking.

Problem is many areas people could be interested in seem to feel hollow
these days as exemplified by Joachim's experience.

> 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). 

Indeed. I just worry about those people that fall through the cracks
because all our inboxes are (likeley) already bursting and that newcomer
desperately waiting for a response is buried somewhere among 10k other
emails :|

--Daniel

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#13843

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Am Mittwoch, dem 04.06.2025 um 17:18 +-0200 schrieb Daniel Gr+APY-ber:
+AD4 Indeed. I just worry about those people that fall through the cracks
+AD4 because all our inboxes are (likeley) already bursting and that
+AD4 newcomer
+AD4 desperately waiting for a response is buried somewhere among 10k
+AD4 other
+AD4 emails :+AHw
+AD4 

This actually happens. See

https://lists.debian.org/debian-apache/2024/10/msg00001.html

Sincerely,
Joachim

-- 
Papier ist gebundenes CO2. Bitte drucken Sie diese EMail aus und
archivieren Sie sie.

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