This seems pretty basic, but in some of my discussions with people in the last two weeks there have been a lot of strong opinions expressed about why people do or do not contribute on Drupal.org. Particularly in regard to my first two proposed ideas:

Why don't we just ask them? Why aren't we using the Poll module to do very basic surveys?

We could do specific ones for anonymous users, like:

Why aren't you logged in?

  • I don't have an account
  • I forgot my password
  • I'm testing the site
  • I have nothing to contribute, why should I?

For logged in users you could ask

When you are here, are you on:

  • Paid time
  • Volunteer time
  • Bits of both
  • I'm a freelancer, so what free time?

It would also be very interesting to target questions to specific groups.

If you know someone's contributions on d.o are going up you could ask:

What improvements do you most like on d.o?

  • The jump to D7
  • The new accessibility features
  • The the new project interface
  • All the great new documentation
  • This poll

We could target module maintainers or core maintainers. Both are a big enough list that it would be useful to occasionally check in to get a pulse of how people are feeling and where the pain points are.

Ultimately if we have a better sense of what people want and what is working, we can work to iterate on that so that it gets better. If we don't have a way to collect information like this to inform our decisions we'll be left to responding to those people who are most vocal on Twitter & the issue queue.

This could also be a very useful tool for the Drupal Association to start getting some direction from it's members. There's no reason why we couldn't send out specific polls to members of the DA to at least do a straw vote on issues of governance.

I don't know if it's worth looking at https://drupal.org/project/advpoll rather than just Core, but it should be considered.

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mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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Issue tags: +Drupal Association
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klonos
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Talking about motivation and having read all your recently-posted "ETA ???" issues on the most popular modules... back in 2011 I posted this over at #42232-29: Help Maintainers Manage Issue Priority by Encouraging Voting:

keeping say... a top 10/20/whatever list of most voted (thus most desired) open issues in an obvious place could help bring focus to them. This could be community-wide and/or per project. Hitting these "popular" issues fast(er) would give the sense of things actually getting done.

Just a related idea that could help those that want to make their first steps to contributing see through the "fog" of the so many open issues. As I say, if this works, it would help reduce some of the frustration caused by the whole "stall-ness" (is that even a word?).

mgifford’s picture

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That's an interesting idea. Particularly if the default rank is displayed by popularity (or that you can at least sort by popularity).

The length & activity of the thread is also likely an issue.

But ya, how do we make it easier for maintainers to sort through and prioritize?

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klonos
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It won't only help maintainers - regular users that can help with testing (half the job of RTBC) can benefit from it too. People seem to eventually be growing pairs of balls and clicking these "1000 open bugs" links (that's how I started to be getting actively involved in the queues) only to find themselves lost at huge lists that make only little if any at all sense to them. We need some sort of "This is confusing/intimidating to me - please show me only a really short list of important things I can work with." thing in place.

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Certainly with http://simplytest.me testing for non-technical users has gotten so much easier. Initiatives like http://walkthrough.it/ & tools like http://docs.seleniumhq.org/ make it easier to replicate issues too.

But yes, definitely need ways to encourage more folks to get involved. Having a smaller list would help.

I think this could be useful too #2185511: Highlight User Contributions & What They Can Do Next in Issue Queue

Right now we're not asking for help in the issue queue. We're not telling folks how they can help to push an issue along. We just show them that intimidating list of issues that they don't understand.

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Title: Find Out More About Users Motivations & Interests » Survey Users Drupal Motivations & Interests
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Bojhan commented

I wonder if this is not more a goal of the content working group to find out? This is pretty fundamental research we shouldn't redo it for each audience.

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Issue tags: -Drupal Association +drupal.org Content Working Group

Yes, the content working group is planning on dong user research, I expect including surveys.

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Project: Drupal.org customizations » Drupal.org content
Version: 7.x-3.x-dev »
Component: Miscellaneous » Other

I expect this still isn't a good project for this, but it certainly isn't ready for implementation/deployment.

mgifford’s picture

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True, this totally isn't ready for for implementation. Thanks @drumm & @Bojhan.

I don't know what the Content Working Group approach is. This may or may not fit in their approach.

My thought was that we could have quick, simple, straw-poll type surveys as part of an on-going approach to learn more about our anonymous visitors, new users and also targeted groups of users in the community too.

I'd love to see questions like:

  • How long should a module be in beta?
  • What do you think would most motivate developers to take on a maintainer role?
  • How should we recognize people who have contributed a lot to the community?
  • How do you generally thank a fellow contributor when they help you?

Some questions could also be used to positively shape the community. The last two might be good examples of that..

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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Related issues: +#1289476: Research: Interview non-contributors to inform "getting involved" area.

#1289476: Research: Interview non-contributors to inform "getting involved" area. Interesting results from 2012 too https://drupal.org/node/1399056

These are some results from the survey:

  • Lack of information on how to contribute, what to work on or whom to contact (42%)
  • Don’t have time (18%)
  • “I don’t know enough technically” (16%)
  • Intimidation factor (13%)
  • Want to talk/need guidance from mentors (13%)
  • Slow turn around time to get feedback/or to get committed (7%)

I really don't think we've been acting on those.

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tvn commented
Issue tags: -drupal.org Content Working Group