Idea: Tool to help folks find a co-maintainers for a project

[patcon]

I've recently realized that I really love helping to re-energize projects that are suffering from maintainer distraction. Stuff like this: slack-go/slack#207

There are all these rules of thumb that i've started to discover for all the steps of:

1. creating the issue, and asking consent
2. researching potential co-maintainers
3. kickstarting tools that will help them work together effectively

I admit that I've started to wonder whether this could be automated a little bit. Not that I would want a bot to manage the relationship building -- that's best done by people, I feel -- but perhaps a tool could help that person research and find good candidates

Examples include:

• researching commit history / issue queues / long issue discussions (which sometimes point to heated convo)
• finding people with cool heads and a sense of empathy
• finding people active on github
• experience with langauge of repo
• github followers
• recent activity
• prioritizing under-represented candidates first (women, non-white, very mature high-schoolers)

Anyhow, obviously there are tons of heuristics to talk about, but I'm curious whether someone like yourself (or this community) might be interested in riffing on ideas :)

Anyhow, thanks very much for your consideration!

Related: isaacs/github#167

cc: @bkeepers (because i think this might be up your alley)

[patcon]

cc: @coddingtonbear

[RichardLitt]

@patcon This is an awesome idea! I totally agree with you. Thanks for posting here.

I think that using name-your-contributors might work, for finding recent activity on a repository. I'm not sure how I'd use this at scale, though.

What would you say to a public video call to discuss this?

@gr2m What do you think about this?

[patcon]

I'm down! Thanks for the receptiveness :)

I'm a little swamped until a civic hackathon I'm helping with on March 3. Can we pick up the thread after that?

[gr2m]

I love the idea in general! I don't have much time to help right now myself though. But this is great. Maybe one comment is that if you perceive a project to be hostile from past discussions, I would not necessarily focus on folks underrepresented in tech for the risk of exposing them to that.

You mentioned you did that before? Maybe write about your experiences so far?

Not that I would want a bot to manage the relationship building -- that's best done by people, I feel -- but perhaps a tool could help that person research and find good candidates

I very much support that. There is a lack of tools for community management and I think @mntnr is the place to build these tools together :)

[patcon]

if you perceive a project to be hostile from past discussions, I would not necessarily focus on folks underrepresented in tech for the risk of exposing them to that.

💯 GREAT POINT

[RichardLitt]

After March 3rd works well for me. I am traveling until then, too. :)

You mentioned you did that before? Maybe write about your experiences so far?

I agree with this! If you'd like to write a post on Medium, I can add it to the Maintainer collection (currently in dev), and we can blast it out. Would that sound like a good idea, to you?

[RichardLitt]

Hey! Let's circle back to this! Want to have a public video call sometime this week?

[patcon]

I'm just about to go mobile at midnight tonight for some travel, but I think I'll be settled in NYC by Friday..? If you can be forgiving of a possible deferral, I'd love to say Friday morning? :) Pls do suggest a time before 11am ET! 🎉

[RichardLitt]

I can't do the morning on Friday! Are you free in the afternoon sometime next week?

[gr2m]

@RichardLitt I could do a call around our weekly checkin time

[patcon]

Cool! When's that @gr2m? Couldn't find any mention of check-in calls for community

[RichardLitt]

Thursdays! We could make that public, too, actually. 6:00EST on Thursday afternoons. :) Does that time work for you, @patcon?

[gr2m]

that's 6pm :)

[patcon]

omg, I'm the worst. I was travelling. I am sad 🙁 that I dropped the ball here, but I have it in my calendar repeating forever. What's the call link?

[RichardLitt]

@patcon Why does that make you sad? You're all good! Hope traveling was fun. :) @gr2m is out this week, and I can't make it today. I'll email you to arrange a better time.