Tracking contributions

[Josh Boyer]

On Tue, 3 Jun 2008 15:01:04 -0400 (EDT)
Greg Dekoenigsberg <gdk at redhat.com> wrote:

> > Now, you have issues with all of that too.
> >
> > 1) How do you do it across the Project as a whole without resorting to
> > a "timecard" that contributors punch.
> 
> We make sure that everything is tied as clearly as possible to FAS2 
> account info, and then we collect measurements where it makes sense.

Right...  so if you spend 20 hours working on a bug and a patch for it,
the only thing you're going to get hits for in FAS are (assuming the
tooling is in place) the individual bugzilla entries and the CVS
commit.  Those will tally totals of seconds.

Unless you have a "Time Spent:" field in CVS (or bugzilla), which is
essentially a punch card. (And prone to dubious entries.)

> > 2) How do you get around the fact that some people might not want their
> > contribution time tracked?
> 
> We make it so that they don't have to do the work, and whenever we present 
> "metrics", we do it in such a way that we're never penalizing, only 
> rewarding.  No volunteer wants to hear "you didn't do enough to suit us," 
> but many might like to hear "you did a tremendous amount of work that we 
> saw."  And if that drives a bit of competition, so much the better.

That isn't quite what I was thinking.  What if people literally don't
want any manhours spent on Fedora to be tracked at all?  Good or bad?
Contribution tracking is inevitable given the FAS account requirement.
But time spent on said contributions can be a sensitive subject and not
everyone may want to have that number floating around somewhere.

> > 3) How do you account for transient contributors?  E.g. The overall
> > contribution time for a particular area may stay the same across two
> > different time periods.  It could be all from the same contributor
> > base, or it could be spread across a bunch of different contributors
> > that come and go.  The wiki would likely be a decent example of the
> > latter.
> 
> It's got to be possible to track different kinds of contributions.  How 
> many times did "gdk" edit the wiki?  Check something into a repo?  Show up 
> on various mailing lists?

You are tracking contributions there, not manhours and time.  If you
want to track contributions, just have FAS tie into
http://www.ohloh.net.

> > 5) How do you quantify "intangibles" like helping people on #fedora?
> 
> Make them tangible.  Collect IRC screen names in FAS2, and do some 
> analysis.

That's iffy at best.

> > 6) How do you actively "recruit" people to areas that need help without
> > driving them away altogether?
> 
> By emphasizing them on the Join page, which is increasingly becoming an 
> effective vector into the project.  Of course, the fact is that you can't 
> make a volunteer do anything they don't really want to do, which is 
> something we must be cognizant of at all times.

Right, and that is sort of my point.  Knowing what areas need help is
one thing, but if said areas are perceived as boring or unrewarding
then pimping them will only be so effective.  So we can point people
there, but we don't want to discourage them by not allowing them to
work where their interest lies.

josh