Call for volunteers: Samvera Code Submission Guidelines Working Group

[Heather Greer Klein]

Announcing a new working group! This Working Group will recommend guidelines to help submitters to Samvera’s GitHub organization understand community expectations regarding authorship and responsibility for their submissions. 

If you'd like to join the kick-off call, please fill out this form so we can find the best time.

Samvera Code Submission Guidelines Working Group

Goals

• Our community and the people within the community remain central.
• Code contributions are from community members, who make their own choices about what tools and technologies they use to assist them with their work. As a community, we use guidelines to ensures those code contributions continue to be manageable for reviewers and to be high quality.
• Established automated processes (such as dependabot) and code contribution requirements (including an upcoming signed CLA and iCLA initiative) are encompassed in guidelines.

Scope & Objectives
This Working Group will recommend guidelines to help submitters to Samvera’s GitHub organization understand community expectations regarding authorship and responsibility for their submissions. 

The expectations the Samvera Board and Partners have identified are:

1. A requirement that AI tool use is acknowledged per the draft guidelines for tagging AI-assisted or generated code, or other processes that may be recommended by the working group;
2. guidelines to ensure that all code contributions have a human author (ie nothing “agentic” or automated by a tool; nothing without a named, human, responsible author);
3. that the author has responsibility for their own contributions; the author understands what they are contributing and can discuss it if needed during code review; that the submitter has guidance about best practices for crafting submissions that reduce complexity for the reviewer;
4. the working group may also suggest additional guidelines or resources to provide to submitters related to these expectations.

This Working Group is chartered by the Samvera Board, and recommendations will be delivered to the Board and discussed in the Samvera Partners call.

Deliverables & Timeframe

Please fill out the kick-off date poll

The group will deliver a list of recommended guidelines and any other recommendations, including suggested implementation processes if applicable.

The goal for the group is to complete their work and close the group by the end of 2026.

Heather

Community Manager Office Hours

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Heather Greer Klein (she/her/hers)

Community Manager

Samvera Community

hea...@samvera.org

https://samvera.org/

Working Tuesday-Friday from Durham, NC (US Eastern Time Zone), on land traditionally cared for by the Shakori and Eno peoples.