Thank you also to Ted, Grant & Isabel for your responses, they're very helpful.
Regards, Mike On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 6:59 AM, Isabel Drost <isa...@apache.org> wrote: > On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 4:13 AM, Mike Percy <mpe...@apache.org> wrote: > > > However the reason I mention it is that up until now, > > others I've spoken to within the Hadoop community have felt that large new > > algorithm contributions are basically what will earn someone > committership > > on Mahout. Based on this thread, consensus seems to be forming that that > is > > *not* what is desired. So what's your rough ideal committer at this point > > in the life of Mahout if they are not contributing new algorithms? I > guess > > it's things like code reviews, correctness fixes, perf improvements, and > > refactorings / enhancements? > > > > > It's the same that is true for other open source projects as well: Help > with improving the existing code base, providing help to users, help with > documentation etc. As Grant pointed out there is an existing wiki page that > explains how to contribute - both in terms of technical details but also in > terms of topics the project needs help with in general. Please let us know > if you find anything missing on that page. > > > > > > Regarding attribution, I saw it mentioned elsewhere in this thread and I > > noticed it myself so I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents. While it seems > like > > a small thing, I wonder whether instituting the Hadoopish "Contributed by > > so-and-so" in commit messages to assign credit for patches by > > non-committers would be help make contributors feel more appreciated for > > their work. Especially if you want to encourage people to contribute lots > > of small patches on their way to committership. Alternatively, putting > > "(Joe Newbie via Jim Veteran)" into every commit also acknowledges the > > committer/reviewer, which is not an easy job and can help people feel > > appreciated for that work as well. > > > > I think this is a good point. It has been done in the past but not > particularly consistently: Some effort was made to assign JIRAs to the > people who worked most on them, commit messages contained the name of the > contributor etc. > > The point in time I personally learnt what difference this can make was > when contributing some code to Tomcat - there my name would appear in > Bugzilla, the commit message and even in the release notes. From a > contributor's point of view this was a really nice experience even though > getting the patch accepted took quite some time. > > > > > Finally, if there are places where the current committers know Mahout > needs > > work, or has holes, have those been articulated in any specific way? If > not > > I think that would be awesome. I know that in general, several of the > docs > > are out of date on the wiki. I suppose that's one. I wonder what else > tops > > the to-do list. Is there something other than just the open JIRA list < > > > > > https://issues.apache.org/jira/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20MAHOUT%20AND%20status%20%3D%20Open%20ORDER%20BY%20priority%20DESC > > >? > > > > > Good point indeed. Also I think we should re-visit the "easy hacks" mark on > JIRA tickets. An in my opinion really good example for how such a page > could look like from another non-Apache project: < > https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Easy_Hacks> (note in > particular this one: <https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39468> > ;) > ) > > > Isabel >
