Request for Feedback: proposal for a new ‘large contribution’ process

[Shauna Gordon-McKeon]

Hello Open edX community,

Over the last couple of years, we’ve worked hard to make the OSPR process efficient and easy to use.  We’re always trying to improve, especially around transparency and response times, but the process exists and it works pretty well, we think.

What you do when your contribution is bigger/more complicated than a single OSPR is much less clear.  We want to create a framework that helps people make large contributions to Open edX and addresses questions like:

• Who inside edX do we need to talk to, and when?

• How do we move from “vague idea” to “clear design” to “implementation”?

• What are OEPs and when should we create them?

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks creating a first draft of this framework, and I’d love to get your feedback.  You can find the working document here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B3zTtL4g1F9a98DGCAIoRHZc50K26sroLgjPf7lRICo

You can leave comments on the doc if you’re so moved.  I encourage you to give broad/high-level feedback, especially feedback that might provoke a significant discussion, on this email thread rather than in the comments.

Looking forward to hearing from you all,

Shauna

[Nate Aune]

Hi Shauna,

This is a fabulous initiative, and thank you for welcoming the community to help shape it. I'll be reviewing the google doc shortly to provide my feedback.

One suggestion that I have after hearing Jono Bacon's keynote at the Open edX conference is to make the onboarding process as smooth as possible, which means avoiding "insider lingo" that might alienate people who are not familiar with what we call things in the Open edX community.

I'm going to ask the question that I already know the answer to, but one that might be lingering in the minds of others browsing on this list. ;)

What are OSPRs and OEPs? 

If I'm a new would-be contributor, I shouldn't have to guess what these acronyms mean. I see that they're defined in your Google Doc, but the would-be contributor might be intimidated to click on that doc link in the first place if they're already getting lost in the alphabet soup.

Just some friendly constructive criticism :)

[Shauna Gordon-McKeon]

Thanks for the feedback, Nate.  I agree that "OEP" and "OSPR" are insider lingo, and we need to more than simply define them in the document.  I was surprised to discover we don't have a good "What's an OSPR and how do you submit one?" blog post or wiki page to link to -- I've added it to our internal to do list, although if anyone in the community wants to write something up and post it on the Open edX blog, you're very welcome to do so.  It would be good to get something like that for OEP as well.  If we have those, we can at the very least include a note at the beginning directing newcomers towards these newcomer-facing materials and encouraging them to reach out to the community and to the open source team for guidance. 

The broader question, to me, is: who is the audience for this 'Large Contribution Workflow' document?  Do we think a significant portion of people will be reading it as newcomers to the Open edX community?  My instinct is that most people will want to wait to make a large contribution until after they've made a smaller one, but I could very well be wrong.  Would love to get people's feedback on this.

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