Re: 21-based K8s Community Micro Tasks

[Lucas Käldström]

Adding kubernetes-dev and kubernetes-maintainers...

On May 28 2017, at 12:31 am, Joseph Jacks <jack...@gmail.com> wrote:

https://twitter.com/kubernetesonarm/status/868577771953455105

Lucas and I got to DM'ing earlier and came up with this over the last hour. Feedback welcome!

Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VQDIAB0OqiSjIHI8AWMvSdceWhnz56jNpZrLs6o7NJY/edit#heading=h.en8cy6hno0c6

[Tim Hockin]

Curiously, I was JUST listening to a radio piece exploring the effects
of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. It is well understood that
"common purpose" and "for the greater good" (intrinsic motivators) are
more effective than money and stuff (extrinsic motivators). The
interesting part was that the addition of an extrinsic motivator to a
situation which was already intrinsically motivated REDUCED the net
motivation.

So we should be careful that applying money to our community doesn't
change it from a righteous mission into a low-paying job.

Tim

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[Joseph Jacks]

Thanks! I do hear you, Tim --- however, I find that such an experiment is worthy in the face of the challenges the project has in this area. Why not have both extrinsic and intrinsic, then see what happens?

Would love more feedback.

On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 3:36 PM, Tim Hockin <tho...@google.com> wrote:

Curiously, I was JUST listening to a radio piece exploring the effects
of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators.  It is well understood that
"common purpose" and "for the greater good" (intrinsic motivators) are
more effective than money and stuff (extrinsic motivators).  The
interesting part was that the addition of an extrinsic motivator to a
situation which was already intrinsically motivated REDUCED the net
motivation.

So we should be careful that applying money to our community doesn't
change it from a righteous mission into a low-paying job.

Tim

On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 2:36 PM, Lucas Käldström <lu...@luxaslabs.com> wrote:
> Adding kubernetes-dev and kubernetes-maintainers...
>
> On May 28 2017, at 12:31 am, Joseph Jacks <jack...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> https://twitter.com/kubernetesonarm/status/868577771953455105
>>
>> Lucas and I got to DM'ing earlier and came up with this over the last
>> hour. Feedback welcome!
>>
>> Doc:
>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VQDIAB0OqiSjIHI8AWMvSdceWhnz56jNpZrLs6o7NJY/edit#heading=h.en8cy6hno0c6
>

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[Tim Hockin]

On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 3:40 PM, Joseph Jacks <jack...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks! I do hear you, Tim --- however, I find that such an experiment is
> worthy in the face of the challenges the project has in this area. Why not
> have both extrinsic and intrinsic, then see what happens?

That was the point of the study. Intrinsic motivators alone ("help
make the world a better place") were MORE effective than combined
motivators ("help make the world a better place, and here's 100 bucks
for your effort").

> Would love more feedback.

Something I wanted to do but fell off my plate is to set up a kube
"janitors" effort. This has been pretty effective in the Linux
kernel, finding ways for people who didn't know the whole kernel to
contribute, clean up, and earn an identity ("I'm on the kernel
janitors team!"), and take a ton of tasks off the backlog. It needs a
rally point, a website, a logo, and some serious effort cataloging
initial work items.

>> > email to kubernetes-use...@googlegroups.com.
>> > To post to this group, send email to kubernet...@googlegroups.com.

[Joseph Jacks]

CIL

On Saturday, May 27, 2017 at 3:45:29 PM UTC-7, Tim Hockin wrote:

On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 3:40 PM, Joseph Jacks <jack...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks! I do hear you, Tim --- however, I find that such an experiment is
> worthy in the face of the challenges the project has in this area. Why not
> have both extrinsic and intrinsic, then see what happens?

That was the point of the study.  Intrinsic motivators alone ("help
make the world a better place") were MORE effective than combined
motivators ("help make the world a better place, and here's 100 bucks
for your effort").

21 also allows the reward to be automatically credited to a charity: currently, there are four choices: CoinCenter, Black Girls Code, Folding At Home, Code To Inspire.

 

> Would love more feedback.

Something I wanted to do but fell off my plate is to set up a kube
"janitors" effort.  This has been pretty effective in the Linux
kernel, finding ways for people who didn't know the whole kernel to
contribute, clean up, and earn an identity ("I'm on the kernel
janitors team!"), and take a ton of tasks off the backlog.  It needs a
rally point, a website, a logo, and some serious effort cataloging
initial work items.

This along with the K8sport effort share similar aims! I think what we are envisioning here is highly complimentary. 

[Daniel Smith]

I agree w/ Tim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect#Volunteering

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[Joseph Jacks]

Thanks for your feedback, Daniel.

My take on this 1999 study you point to is that it has some major flaws when taken into current context:

• The world was extremely different when this study was conducted. The sharing economy did not exist. There were only ~195M people on the Internet globally. Etcetera. 
• RE: "If the size of the monetary reward is not large enough to compensate for the loss of intrinsic motivation, overall engagement can decline": We can easily solve this simply by increasing the reward amount. With the first basic implementation of extrinsic incentivizing -- i.e K8s experts and/or charities get paid in BTC/fiat only when they respond to K8s user questions via the 21 system -- we have a reward of $5 set for each reply. That can easily be adjusted up to $20 and far beyond. Balaji Srinivasan shared with me earlier that 21.co/ethereum routinely sees users paying $10 for answers from Ethereum experts. 
  
• (Some help with framing thanks to Balaji here)... Regarding the net result as is implied in the 1999 study and in other areas as Tim alluded, I think in most areas generally the introduction of market dynamics really improves the overall experience. There are certainly edge cases like the ones that Dan Ariely identifies, but these need to be kept in perspective against the gigantic examples of (say) communist vs capitalist China, or communist vs capitalist Eastern Europe. Most of the time, you are replacing a breadline with a market.
  

HTH!

[lu...@luxaslabs.com]

Thanks for the feedback Tim and Daniel

As a independent contributor (+more) working on Kubernetes "for the greater good" for more than two years I want to say a couple of words:

First it should be stated that we're not in control of whether person A wants to pay person B for getting a question answered via whatever medium (be it SO, 21, Slack or email or...).

Sooner or later a Kubernetes list would pop up. We (the maintainers or steering committee or any specific persons) are not in control of that nor the people in it or the people using it.

Secondly, we should recognize that most people working on "boring tasks" as well as features are monetarily paid by a company. 

There is _a lot_ of money in this game already, so we shouldn't pretend there isn't any.

I fully recognize the problem you're referring to and can see some potential drawbacks, but I do think there are more benefits than drawbacks with the proposal.

Scenario 1: A person that's interested in K8s but works on something else generally. Would pick up a K8s job if possible.

 - People that work on Kubernetes for the greater good most often have an other job. In my case I'm living with my parents while studing in high school.

   People that want to work full-time on Kubernetes could be in the list to get job offers regularily from people posting to the list. That's one use-case for the list.

It shouldn't go unsaid that thanks to being able to do contracting I can work on K8s as my summer-time job (but I'm not doing contracting right now when dealing with these community matters, this is my hobby)

I can't say my motivation has declined, rather I'm more motivated than ever to do more good to the K8s ecosystem than I would be able to do otherwise.

Scenario 2: A general contributor that works for the greater good

 - The most interesting part here IMO is the charity and marketplace aspects though. As Joseph also pointed out earlier here, you can choose to donate all the to you transferred funds directly to a charity of your choice, currently you can choose between CoinCenter, Black Girls Code, Folding At Home, Code To Inspire.

 - To me, being able to help people that are using the 21 list to escalate important (support as well as non-support) issues while donating those $5 or so dollars to help Afghan women learn to code is truly motivational.

Note: The person that takes the money (which you referred to -- accepting the extrinsic motivation) maybe isn't the person that would work for the greater good in the first place. I think the person that contributes to K8s for the intrinsic motivation is very likely to boost the intrinsic motivation by using the charity option.

Scenario 3: A person that hasn't been involved in K8s very much so far but sees his/her chance to earn some dollars

This person doesn't seem to recognize the intrinsic motivation related to OSS projects and didn't contribute really to K8s before.

Now he/she does contribute and gets some dollars in return. Let him take those bucks, he probably needs them in that case.

Further ideas:

I've been experimenting with the tought of providing a CNCF sponsor HTTP service in the 21 marketplace (https://21.co/mkt/). It would basically be a way to donate the bitcoins you've earned from completing microtasks on 21 to different areas of CNCF. Each API call costs a little money, and the CNCF-backed service would just charge a dollar or two, add your name to a CNCF individual sponsors list and let you choose what to donate money for.

Imagine anyone being able to issue a command like this (or do it via the 21 web interface)

21 buy "cncf/sponsor/diversity_scholarship"

and the API service will put your name on a list next to the total amount you've paid (adds up on every API call). Now you've donated to CNCF diversity scholarship recipients!

And as the 21 ecosystem grows, it might be possible to choose CNCF instead of the four above mentioned charities automatically...

Let me know what you think... I have even more thoughts to share later ;)

[lu...@luxaslabs.com]

So what I was basically trying to say Daniel and Tim is that I believe this matter is much more complex than a binary good/bad switch.

> Something I wanted to do but fell off my plate is to set up a kube 
"janitors" effort.  This has been pretty effective in the Linux 
kernel, finding ways for people who didn't know the whole kernel to 
contribute, clean up, and earn an identity ("I'm on the kernel 
janitors team!"), and take a ton of tasks off the backlog.  It needs a 
rally point, a website, a logo, and some serious effort cataloging 
initial work items. 

I really like this idea as well. But I think it's a compliment to what's proposed above, not a replacement.

This also goes for K8sPort (compliment to these community efforts). It's pretty good but hasn't gained traction at all really.

K8sPort also offers a charity option. I just donated $200 to victims of the Haiti Earthquake via K8sPort: https://campaign.newstorycharity.org/

This all just thanks to the Issues and Pull Requests I've created, SO questions I've answered and so on.

I see a huge potential here to square the good we're doing, both donating to OSS and charities.

As pointed out above, we can't control whether 21 becomes a thing or not, nor if the Kubernetes 21 list will be used or not.

What we can do is to provide good examples to the community and try to find the forums/tools/activities that work well for us to engage the community even more and keep the project healthy.

My and Joseph's intention with this thread was to investigate how we can possibly use this tool in the best possible way for the community (a list would be created in any case sooner or later).

[David Aronchick]

Ok - broadly, I love the experiment, and am supportive of trying it out.

That said, I'm not sure there's any evidence that we lack people, or the people lack time/motivation, to contribute. Money/extrinsic rewards feels like it's trying to solve the wrong problem. From everyone I've talked to, it's far far far more about streamlining the contributions that people already would like to make - and, interestingly, we (the project) are more than ready/willing/able to pay actual $ for streamlining this process in a substantive way - to a charity or no. 

Speaking of which - where's the latest priority ordered backlog of work to do to make contributing less painful?

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[Tim Hockin]

I'm not against trying it, I just have my own predictions. I agree
with Aronchick - the biggest issue we have is not that we need more
people - we need better (more actionable) bugs, we need onramps, we
guidance and reviews, and we need to make contributing hurt less
(rebases, verify and update scripts, staging, etc).

For people to do THAT work, I'd pay out of my own pocket.

On Sun, May 28, 2017 at 11:23 AM, 'David Aronchick' via Kubernetes
developer/contributor discussion <kuberne...@googlegroups.com>
wrote:

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[Alexis Richardson]

Tim

Could solving this issue also lead to movement on the "janitors" type initiatives that Lucas says have worked for Linux?

In general, how can areas that need love/work get advertised/resourced while staying within the norms of the community?

Alexis

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[Tim Hockin]

I worry that this will DISINCENTIVIZE janitors. People who would do
it for the love of cleaning up a mess, will now see it as a low-paying
job, or won't work without funds.

I think the strongest drivers of work are identity (intrinsic) and
recognition (extrinsic) - "I am a Kubernetes Janitor" and getting your
name in a file somewhere. We get contributors by playing those things
up. By having a web page for janitors, and a mailing list, and a
logo, and stickers, and tshirts, and by ackowledging the janitors
project.

That takes effort I don't have bandwidth for right now :(

[Alexis Richardson]

To be clear: I agree with you about funds and incentives.

I was referring to your on ramps issue (set out below in your email).

Would some kind of "all hands work fest" be a way to create the on ramps?  It seems like there is a huge barrier to progress otherwise.  If everyone* could down tools for a day and just work on this, maybe the initial resources could be created, eg task lists, website, ..

*Everyone as in whoever has been and still wishes to contribute

Sorry if this is a lunatic thought.

[Tim Hockin]

Ahh, yeah, we need so surge effort to bootstrap

[Brian Grant]

+Contributor Experience

On Sun, May 28, 2017 at 9:13 AM, <lu...@luxaslabs.com> wrote:

So what I was basically trying to say Daniel and Tim is that I believe this matter is much more complex than a binary good/bad switch.

> Something I wanted to do but fell off my plate is to set up a kube 
"janitors" effort.  This has been pretty effective in the Linux 
kernel, finding ways for people who didn't know the whole kernel to 
contribute, clean up, and earn an identity ("I'm on the kernel 
janitors team!"), and take a ton of tasks off the backlog.  It needs a 
rally point, a website, a logo, and some serious effort cataloging 
initial work items. 

I really like this idea as well. But I think it's a compliment to what's proposed above, not a replacement.

This also goes for K8sPort (compliment to these community efforts). It's pretty good but hasn't gained traction at all really.

Are there thing we could do to improve k8sport adoption? Would k8sport and 21 compete for people to accomplish the same tasks?

 

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[Brian Grant]

On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 3:45 PM, 'Tim Hockin' via Kubernetes Maintainers <kubernetes-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 3:40 PM, Joseph Jacks <jack...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks! I do hear you, Tim --- however, I find that such an experiment is
> worthy in the face of the challenges the project has in this area. Why not
> have both extrinsic and intrinsic, then see what happens?

That was the point of the study.  Intrinsic motivators alone ("help
make the world a better place") were MORE effective than combined
motivators ("help make the world a better place, and here's 100 bucks
for your effort").

> Would love more feedback.

Something I wanted to do but fell off my plate is to set up a kube
"janitors" effort.  This has been pretty effective in the Linux
kernel, finding ways for people who didn't know the whole kernel to
contribute, clean up, and earn an identity ("I'm on the kernel
janitors team!"), and take a ton of tasks off the backlog.  It needs a
rally point, a website, a logo, and some serious effort cataloging
initial work items.

And significant guidance, review, and PR bandwidth.

 

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[Justin Santa Barbara]

On Wednesday, May 31, 2017 at 2:13:39 AM UTC-4, Brian Grant wrote:

Are there thing we could do to improve k8sport adoption? Would k8sport and 21 compete for people to accomplish the same tasks?

I haven't been able to get an invite to k8sport.  Digging out the debugging tools, it looks like it might not like last names with a space.  Regardless of my personal naming peculiarities, a sign-up process with a delay is going to cause a huge drop-off.

I think I tried to register before, was told to expect an email soon, never got it and forgot about it.  Luxas mentioned something about giving k8sport money to charity, so I had another look.

If we want to increase k8sport adoption, I think making registration instant (at least for a critical mass of users e.g. k8s contributors), and the occasional tweet or other memory-jog, would go a long way.

[Ryan Quackenbush]

Justin:

I’m sorry to hear you had trouble signing up, initially.

Currently, we’re using K8sPort.org to request the registration. By requesting at that site, a few folks are automatically notified and can send you an invite through the hub, itself. The “instant signup” was discussed, early on, but the concern there was a potential flood of fake invites, which occurs fairly regularly, or even individuals creating multiple accounts.  It’s something we could reconsider, and would be easy to enable, although it could remove some oversight the hub currently has.

Brian:

Since being announced via a blog post around the 1.6 release, the hub has already seen close to 500 organic invite requests.  Ideally, getting the K8 port listed at the Kubernetes github, and on more of the formal CNCF properties would also be very helpful re: sign up rate. I think we’d start to see the rate increase quite a bit, then.

The integration with github is really key (and powerful), as people can instantly be recognized for contributions being made to the project once they link their account. There was also discussion around connecting the emerging formal contributor levels to the badges/advocate structure of the K8sport, which I think would help.

I think there’s definitely a way to tie these initiatives together, and create more opportunities for folks to contribute to great causes (as Lucas has already done via the K8s port) – while participating in a great community around a project they love. It’s also worth noting that, for Meetups and events, the K8sPort allows you to “check in” at the locations and, in so doing, gain access to event-specific challenges.

Additionally, I’m always more than happy to hop on a quick call anytime to discuss this, and any input/advice anyone may have.
-RQ