I've been thinking a bit about stories & their importance for shaping human behavior. Great examples about brands and myths from http://winningthestorywars.com/

Drupal is a global brand. It's bigger than Acquia or any of the other companies who leverage it. I see the Drupal Association as having responsibility for maintaining that brand.

I do think that there is a really exciting story about how a group of people, led by a humble leader set out on a journey to make the Internet a better place.

The community that has formed has produced a lot of other knights (if you will) who have gathered around on the quest for the holy grail of keeping up with the needs on the Internet.

I do think that the story of King Arthur (Dries) is well known, but I think it's useful to highlight the many, many other folks who have played huge roles in this community.

This community spotlight is nice but it really hasn't been regular enough or highly promoted.

I think that there are also ways to automate some of this more since we have mentors listed in our profiles.

For folks who have mentors listed in their profiles, we can ask for stories for one mentor at a time. From my profile, I could be asked for my a story about what inspired me about @webchick (who encouraged me to start working on Drupal's accessibility) or @sun (who patiently helped improve my patches to Core).

I think we could pull together a few of these stories quite easily and start highlighting the individuals who have really contributed so much to this code that is so important to us.

I think mostly it will come down to stories of people helping people. This is I think the unique thing about this community. The community is bigger than the code.

I think it's also worth highlighting those folks who did play a big role, but are no longer with the community.

I do think we could also be doing stuff to help suggest mentors to users. I think this is something that should be determined from activity in the issue queue over time.

This might be no more than a High school Yearbook with statements from people we've interacted with over time and maybe even photos. However, many of those hold onto those memories and hold that symbolic document highly.

I do think it is worth while to have some clear, public acknowledgement for the individuals who have contributed the most and find a means to encourage other folks to join those ranks.

I think this is bigger than the Open Badge type project, but could certainly also be related. I see it as part of gamification of Drupal - https://groups.drupal.org/node/410503

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mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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Issue summary: View changes
Issue tags: +gamification
DamienMcKenna’s picture

DamienMcKenna
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Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)
Issue tags: -gamification

We don't need to promote egotism.

https://twitter.com/timplunkett/status/438112528279683074

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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Title: Recognizing our Heros & Building the Legend » Make it Easier to Spotlight Community Members & Their Contributions
Status: Closed (won't fix) » Active

I suck at titles. As I said on IRC, this idea came to me in a sauna on the weekend. That being said, I'm re-opening the issue as a rant on twitter isn't justification to close any issue in the issue queue.

This is about branding ultimately. What is the Drupal brand. What attracts developers, themers, and ultimately clients to want to trust their public presence to this community and the software they write.

This isn't about supporting egotism, it's about recognizing the individuals who have made Drupal what it is. It's not just Dries & Webchick who should be seen as rockstars. Lots of other people have done some great stuff to make Drupal better. They get next to no recognition for their efforts and because we suck at recognizing the work folks do, they get disheartened and decide not to do it. That's not the only reason, but I'm certain it plays a role.

There are 9 community members spotlighted in over 3 years https://drupal.org/community-spotlight

Is that because we all suck? Or is that because we suck at telling our story and properly thanking folks who have contributed back in so many important ways.

@DamienMcKenna & @TimPlunkett - it is embarrassing that you guys aren't highlighted. You two give a lot and there are hundreds of others that do amazing things that should also get recognition for what they do.

This isn't about egotism it is about respect & recognition.

YesCT’s picture

YesCT CreditAttribution: YesCT commented

If the complaint here is that the community spotlight isn't being updated often enough, then seems like the fix is to:
a) volunteer to do community spotlight posts,
b) volunteer to find someone to do them,
c) propose that it be included in the DA budget to do 1 every X months, ... or
d) propose an automated way to generate them.. which would require an automated way to notice contributions beyond patching issues
e) just leave this open as a complaint that the community spot light isn't updated often enough with no proposed resolution.

Right now it's "Make it Easier to Spotlight Community Members & Their Contributions" so.. what exactly is the proposal?

Is it to change the my mentors field to be an autocomplete on username with a text area for "story of what they did", with an "add another" mentor button? And then to have the community spotlight be a view which selects stories for mentors mention more than some threshold?

I'm just not clear.

There is a new general acceptance in the community that we not refer to people ask rock stars and so "heros" could have hit a sore point here.

The idea of suggesting mentors to people is a separate issue. Which would rely on more meta data where we might want to be able to tell who has reviewed which kind of issues. Not always the same as a mentor...

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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I wasn't involved in the community spotlight initiative. I'm a terrible writer. I really only discovered it recently. I do spend a lot of time on d.o, so I'm sure I'm not the only one that doesn't know about it. If we used the sidebar to advertise efforts like this, I'm sure I would have seen it sometime in the projects existence, but we don't. There are lots of things on d.o that just seem to be hidden away unless you're searching for them or happen to read the email where they are announced. Ultimately, if it doesn't get traffic, folks aren't going to bother to submit nominations or write up folks.

The issue here is broader than just the community spotlight page. It's getting to that first link I included in the summary. I'm not sure if anyone has looked at it, but essentially it's about establishing a brand or the stories behind the Drupal community. I may have played with it more than folks liked and distracted the issue, but essentially, people are shaped more by story than by cold hard facts. Stories guide our behaviors, shape who we want to emulate and help to broaden the understanding of complex issues. The Drupal community is complex.

I was leaning to d) as it could involve more people but frankly c) would probably be easier. Heck f) Regularly highlight the community spotlight d.o would also work.

I did outline how we could help to auto generate feedback. Mostly by asking people who have already identified people as their mentors a short series of questions. Those questions could then be gathered together into page which highlights those mentors. It would require some editing, but would be easier than interviewing someone from scratch. It would also promote mentors in the profiles.

Certainly, this idea needs to be fleshed out.

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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Sorry, hit save too early.

I do think that if someone is listed as the mentor of 6-7 other people that it would be worth sending those people an email encouraging them to go to a page where they fill in some questions. It has to be proactive. People need to be asked. It could be in the form of "We noticed you listed @sun as one of your mentors, could you take 5 minutes to tell us a short story about why? We are gathering stories about mentors to feature on Drupal.org."

It can't simply be an enhancement to a form that 0.001% of the community knows exists.

I think it was the term gamification that got Tim pissed off. I really don't care much about terms, I want to explore what we can do to improve the health of our community. Heros, Rock Stars, egos.... And yet there are people out there that are silently doing a lot and not getting the recognition they deserve. We need more ways to prompt people to recognize the great things that the community is doing for each other.

I definitely got carried away when talking about how we could start suggesting mentors to people. Agreed that this would be a new issue, and one that would really depend on us making better use of the current mentor field.

YesCT’s picture

YesCT CreditAttribution: YesCT commented

Looks like c) got some movement.

https://groups.drupal.org/node/410868 says

Leigh Carver joined the Drupal Association as a content writer. For Drupal.org she will be working on Case Studies and Community Spotlight section, both helping community members with their submissions and writing new content. Expect to see her in issue queues pretty soon!

and that links to https://association.drupal.org/content/great-meet-you-drupal-community

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I would be in support of getting the word out about the mentor field in the profile automatically. Not sure how to do that.

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If people do note their mentors, then expanding the mentor part of the profile form to have optional sub questions (that could be sent to someone who could see if they would make a good story) could get part way toward automating things.

We would need some mock ups for that so that the extra fields didn't drive people away and decide it wasn't worth it noting just who were their mentors.

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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Those are all good ideas.

If we're modifying the profile form to gather this information, then perhaps we'd need something dynamic that is generated from the list of supported mentors that are listed. Anyways, I'm sure we could find some talented front end guy to make that work nicely.

However, I'm not sure that putting more in the profile pages is a good idea. After all, most people don't spend their time in the profile pages.

How do we even get folks to fill in the mentor pages? It would be interesting to know what % of active users have this blank.

If we could use the community to rough something up and provide a template for a content writer for Leigh Carver or whoever to start from it would be great.

Pulling out stories through interviews can be such a long process. It really doesn't scale. However, if we could target just the most active list of mentors... If we get positive stories and photos about them.. It could be a really meaningful surprise..

But again, it would mean a lot more if there was a way to feature that on the home page, or on the dashboard, or to all anonymous visitors who are using the site or to more than the current community spotlight currently does.

It should be something that is really prominent in the community in order to be meaningful I think.

EDIT: More thinking about this.....

I do think the spotlighted user should be fairly random, not based on a hierarchy of any sort. Folks who have had enough submissions.

So potential impacts if this is done right:

  • mentors will feel valued by the community (intrinsic)
  • more contributors will be encouraged to help out to see that they have an opportunity to get featured (extrinsic)
  • newbies will see examples of members of the community they can follow (intrinsic)

There are probably other things....