Reduced availability for Mark Waite

[Mark Waite]

I'm Mark Waite.  I'm the Jenkins Documentation Officer.  I’ll be unavailable or have significantly reduced availability to help in the Jenkins project for at least eight weeks beginning Wednesday, June 9, 2021.

I have been accepted to donate a kidney to my brother’s son.  He’s the father of three children and has a genetic disorder that is causing his kidneys to fail.  The transplant team tells us that providing him one of my kidneys will allow him to live a longer, more productive life.

I need help to fill the roles that I perform for the Jenkins project while I’m unavailable.

Where you can help

We want to spread knowledge around the Jenkins community.  We want others to be able to help the project in ways that are interesting to them and helpful for the community.  This kidney donation is an opportunity for others to learn new things about the Jenkins project and to use those skills to help others.

Areas that need help are listed below.  These are also areas where we’ve wanted to broaden to allow more people to help.  We hope that volunteers will assist and will continue helping even after I return.

Create the Jenkins weekly release changelog

Each weekly Jenkins release needs a changelog.  Users read the changelog to understand what’s new in the release.  Users provide feedback on their experiences through the ratings system that is connected to the changelog.  Without a changelog, users won’t know what changed and the ratings system won’t have a place where users can share their ratings of the release.  We need the weekly changelog to continue while I am unavailable.

The changelog process is documented in its style guide and generator tools repo.  Daniel Beck provided me with a one hour tutorial that was enough for me to understand how to create the changelogs when I started doing them.  I’m providing similar tutorials for those who are willing to help.

I hosted the first tutorial session during documentation office hours Tuesday May 25 2:00 AM UTC.  I’ll host an additional tutorial session during documentation office hours Tuesday June 1 2:00 AM UTC.  If there are volunteers in Europe or morning Americas times, we can also schedule a time during European hours.

Create the Jenkins LTS release changelog

The Jenkins 2.289.1 LTS release is coming in early June.  I’ve created the 2.289.1 LTS release changelog and would like to use the process of creating the 2.289.1 changelog as a tutorial for volunteers that will create the Jenkins 2.289.2 changelog for July and the Jenkins 2.289.3 changelog for August.

The LTS changelog creators need prior experience with Jenkins core development so that they recognize the concepts that Jenkins uses and how those concepts are applied in the changelog.  They need to be experienced with Jenkins so that they can identify the changes to be mentioned in the changelog.

The changelog process is documented in its style guide and generator tools repo.  Daniel Beck provided me with a one hour tutorial that was enough for me to understand how to create the changelogs when I started doing them.  I can provide a similar tutorial for those who are willing to help.

We prefer the changelog is created at roughly the same time as the release candidate.  The 2.289.1 release candidate has been delivered and needs the changelog.  I’ve submitted the changelog 

Review documentation pull requests

The Jenkins documentation is maintained in a GitHub repository.  Changes are submitted as pull requests.  Changes need to be reviewed and merged.  We need more reviewers of documentation pull requests.

If you’re willing to review documentation pull requests, add your review comments to the existing pull requests.  After a period of consistent review, the project will discuss adding you to various GitHub groups that provide additional permissions.

Prepare the documentation track at the Contributor Summit

The Jenkins Contributor Summit will be held June 25, 2021, immediately after cdCon.  A documentation track has been proposed for the Contributor Summit, but I won’t be able to organize that track or lead it.

The volunteer(s) for this role would discuss documentation track topics in the Jenkins documentation mailing list and would prepare for discussions and planning that will happen at the contributor summit.

If we don’t have one or more volunteers for this role, we’ll encourage documentation contributors to participate in other tracks and skip the documentation track.

Lead documentation office hours

I lead the Jenkins documentation office hours each Tuesday at 2:00 AM UTC and need someone to take the lead of that role.  The person would take notes during the meeting, assure the meeting is recorded, and upload the recording of the meeting to the Jenkins YouTube channel.

[Mark Waite]

My availability has unexpectedly changed.  The kidney donation was cancelled at the pre-op appointment because my kidney function had diminished unexpectedly.

The transplant team wisely decided that donating a lower function kidney and leaving me with only one lower function kidney is not a good thing.  The doctors are now trying to find the reasons for my reduced kidney function in hopes that I will be able to donate in the future.

I'm back.  I'm hopeful that we'll find the root problem, resolve it, and that I'll be able to donate the kidney in the next few months.