Problem

  • Not enough Drupal core contributors.
  • Too many tasks to do.
  • Many existing contributors who would love to train/mentor newbies.
  • But they don't do it.

Goal

  • Make onboarding new Drupal contributors fun and a positive game.

Details

Proposed solution

  1. Add a My mentors field to d.o user profiles: Allows to specify (multiple) people that you want to credit for "pulling" you into Drupal [core?] contributions.

  2. Expose a "People mentored by xyz" view for each d.o user. (native, built-in Profile module feature, no work required)

Notes

  • This applies to all kinds of Drupal mentoring (core, contrib, documentation, leadership, community building, etc.).

  • This leads to an actual exposure of the prolific community interactions. Pulling more people into contributing to Drupal [core] is a constant need and action. No one can reasonably disagree with that.

    The amount of possible faking/abuse is close to zero, as we easily notice unusual numbers very quickly.

    Mentoring also works in all fields and on all levels — it is not limited to code, reviews, or commits. It's an universal measure that also works for UX/design contributions, and even for Community building contributions.

  • It's a way to give "kudos" to someone else, but in a very particular way.

    Allowing everyone of us to learn about whom we have positively 'infected' to contribute to Drupal [core] is a major incentive for doing more of that. (Next to the positive feeling of "distributing workload" ;))

    It also works r.e.c.u.r.s.i.v.e.l.y. as soon as the process is started.

Screenies

  • Profile edit form:

  • Profile view:

  • Profile listing:

Instructions

  • Label: Mentored by
  • Field name: profile_mentored_by
  • Type: List
  • Description:
    Give credit to community members who have significantly influenced your contributions to Drupal. For example, people who mentored you in the issue queue, IRC, user groups, code sprints, <a href="/core-mentoring">Core contribution mentoring hours</a>, etc.<br />
<br />
Learn more about <a href="/mentoring">mentoring</a> other contributors.<br />
  • Page title: People mentored by %value

Related Issues

CommentFileSizeAuthor
#17 who-mentored-the mentor-2012-09-08_0737.png110.72 KBYesCT
#9 mentors-profile-edit.png12.23 KBsun
#9 mentors-profile-view.png16.8 KBsun
#9 mentors-profile-listing.png4.36 KBsun
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Comments

sun’s picture

sun
Primary language German
Location Karlsruhe
CreditAttribution: sun commented
Title: Add a "My Mentors" profile field to drupal.org user accounts (user reference) » Add a "My Mentors" profile field to drupal.org user accounts
sun’s picture

sun
Primary language German
Location Karlsruhe
CreditAttribution: sun commented
Issue summary: View changes

Updated issue summary.

sun’s picture

sun
Primary language German
Location Karlsruhe
CreditAttribution: sun commented
Issue summary: View changes

.

xjm’s picture

xjm
she/her
Primary language English
CreditAttribution: xjm commented
Issue summary: View changes

Updated issue summary.

xjm’s picture

xjm
she/her
Primary language English
CreditAttribution: xjm commented

I really, really like this idea, because:

  • It's simple.
  • It's easy to implement.
  • It doesn't depend on any third-party definition of what's considered a valuable contribution.
  • It focuses on positive relationships and community growth.
  • It's about collaboration rather than competition.
  • It gives credit to a lot of really valuable contributors who aren't necessarily listed in commit logs.

I can't wait to fill in this field with the names of the people who mentored me. :)

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

killes@www.drop.org CreditAttribution: killes@www.drop.org commented

I don't want to spoil the party, but can we postpone that to after the D7 upgrade? You could get a d.o d7 dev site and start developing there.

webchick’s picture

webchick
she/they
Primary language English
Location Vancouver 🇨🇦
CreditAttribution: webchick commented

I think as long as we de-scope this to only a standard "freeform list" Profile module field on user profiles, it should both only take 3 seconds to implement AND cause no additional burden on the D6 -> D7 upgrade.

So can I? Pretty please? :)

I can only second everything that xjm just said, and right now would be an ideal time to do this, given D8 feature freeze is coming up fast. I fear that by the time the d.o D7 upgrade is done, it'll be too late.

webchick’s picture

webchick
she/they
Primary language English
Location Vancouver 🇨🇦
CreditAttribution: webchick commented
Issue summary: View changes

Small tweak.

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

killes@www.drop.org CreditAttribution: killes@www.drop.org commented

If that works for you, I see no reason not to do it. The upgrade path should be straightforward.

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

killes@www.drop.org CreditAttribution: killes@www.drop.org commented

Can we ensure that no external links can be added?

webchick’s picture

webchick
she/they
Primary language English
Location Vancouver 🇨🇦
CreditAttribution: webchick commented

Well, not really. It's a free-form text field. If external links were added they would go to a link like: http://drupal.org/profile/mentored_by/http%3A/%252Fspamorama.com, rather than spamorama.com.

I'm not really down with blocking this feature on that, though, given that at this very moment I can do this http://drupal.org/profile/profile_interest/http%3A/%252Fspamorama.com :)

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

killes@www.drop.org CreditAttribution: killes@www.drop.org commented
Status: Active » Reviewed & tested by the community

that is good enough for me (for now, can be improved later).

sun’s picture

sun
Primary language German
Location Karlsruhe
CreditAttribution: sun commented
FileSize
mentors-profile-listing.png4.36 KB
mentors-profile-view.png16.8 KB
mentors-profile-edit.png12.23 KB
sun’s picture

sun
Primary language German
Location Karlsruhe
CreditAttribution: sun commented
Issue summary: View changes

Killed confusing stuff for later.

sun’s picture

sun
Primary language German
Location Karlsruhe
CreditAttribution: sun commented
Issue summary: View changes

Updated issue summary.

chx’s picture

chx CreditAttribution: chx commented
Status: Reviewed & tested by the community » Fixed

That sounds sheer awesome! Thanks sun for the awesome idea. Implemented and tested at http://drupal.org/user/9446 http://drupal.org/profile/profile_my_mentors/Gabor%20Hojtsy

Dries’s picture

Dries CreditAttribution: Dries commented

I like it.

We should try to capture the data in such a way that is can be sliced and diced later.

webchick’s picture

webchick
she/they
Primary language English
Location Vancouver 🇨🇦
CreditAttribution: webchick commented

Yeah, this is unfortunately the best we can do for now, but the plan is once Drupal.org is on D7, to move to something like actual user reference fields, back-references, listing overview pages, and the like. :)

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

killes@www.drop.org CreditAttribution: killes@www.drop.org commented

We should try to capture the data in such a way that is can be sliced and diced later.

Calls for an opt-out option. :p

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

killes@www.drop.org CreditAttribution: killes@www.drop.org commented
Issue summary: View changes

Updated issue summary.

TransitionKojo’s picture

TransitionKojo CreditAttribution: TransitionKojo commented

Are we using this for CORE mentors only, or ANYONE who's mentored us in Drupal?

Just checking...I don't want to 'pollute the namespace'.

I probably said that wrong...

chx’s picture

chx CreditAttribution: chx commented

Anyone I'd say.

chx’s picture

chx CreditAttribution: chx commented
Issue summary: View changes

Updated issue summary.

xjm’s picture

xjm
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CreditAttribution: xjm commented

Updated the summary to reflect that we decided any sort of Drupal mentoring should go in the field. The fact that all my mentors happen to be core developers probably reflects my interests and involvement! :)

xjm’s picture

xjm
she/her
Primary language English
CreditAttribution: xjm commented
Issue summary: View changes

Updated issue summary to reflect the scope of the mentoring field.

xjm’s picture

xjm
she/her
Primary language English
CreditAttribution: xjm commented
Issue summary: View changes

Updated issue summary.

YesCT’s picture

YesCT CreditAttribution: YesCT commented
FileSize
who-mentored-the mentor-2012-09-08_0737.png110.72 KB

One fun thing to do is to go to someone's page, like sun's and click on someone who mentored sun, like webchick, and see who mentored webchick. From a list of people "mentored by" whoever, I want to see who mentored whoever. Make that a link. These are tags, right (or something not really references...). But we could guess they are d.o user names and use something like dgo.to/@whoever to guess a link to link to their profile and see who mentored them.

YesCT’s picture

YesCT CreditAttribution: YesCT commented

hmm. spaces and special chars make linking interesting. http://drupal.org/profile/profile_my_mentors/Gabor%20Hojtsy is the same as http://drupal.org/profile/profile_my_mentors/G%C3%A1bor%20Hojtsy but dgo.to/@Gabor Hojtsy doesn't go to the place people probably want to go to: dgo.to/@Gábor Hojtsy

Is that why the user search box is on the people mentored by page? Because typing Gabor Hojtsy will give search results better than guessing at a link? ... Nope: http://drupal.org/search/user_search/Gabor%20Hojtsy

Since the search doesn't work any better, maybe guessing at a link for whoever in "People mentored by whoever" is ok?

YesCT’s picture

YesCT CreditAttribution: YesCT commented

I made #1778766: Add a "People I Mentored" link to drupal.org user accounts (follow-up to "My Mentors") for adding a different field to the profile.

frazras’s picture

frazras CreditAttribution: frazras commented

It would be nice to have a mentee count, to say frazras has mentored 33 mentees. Another nice ranking system for the Drupal eco-system :-)

vlad.dancer’s picture

vlad.dancer
Primary language Ukrainian
Location Kyiv
CreditAttribution: vlad.dancer commented

Oh my God! It's really cool feature! I love it! And i completely agree with xjm #2 comment!

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

YesCT’s picture

YesCT CreditAttribution: YesCT commented

follow-up: #2024317: Add a link from https://drupal.org/profile/profile_my_mentors/webchick to the user account.

YesCT’s picture

YesCT CreditAttribution: YesCT commented
Issue summary: View changes

Fixed a typo.

YesCT’s picture

YesCT CreditAttribution: YesCT commented
Issue summary: View changes

with related issues

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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Primary language English
CreditAttribution: mgifford commented
Status: Closed (fixed) » Active
Issue tags: +onboarding
Related issues: +#2024317: Add a link from https://drupal.org/profile/profile_my_mentors/webchick to the user account., +#2203355: Make it Easier to Spotlight Community Members & Their Contributions

I think we need to reflect a bit about this issue, so I am re-opening it.

5 people including @sun touched this idea before it was implemented. This is telling, considering the number of people who were very active in the same time period looking at issues regarding the Prairie Initiative.

All of the real discussion happened on either September 7th or 8th, 2012.

YesCT: opened a follow-up issue here linking to a related issue that I added. Nobody on this list follow-ed up on it.

I've added an issue where we could leverage this information a bit more in order to better highlight users. YesCT is the only one who responded.

So now the mentor role has been implemented on d.o for over a year, has there been any evaluation? I've just added another issue to #2193959: [meta] Add more metrics to try to see if we can't start looking at this.

Going back to the stated problems. Has adding the mentor field:

  • Increased the number of contributors (is there any way to tell this?)
  • Helped to reduce the number of tasks (has it helped with getting people involved)
  • Are the mentors in any way engaged in training the newbies? Are newbies even aware that this might be an option?

Has this option made "onboarding new Drupal contributors fun and a positive game"?

I don't think that it has. Perhaps because it wasn't taken far enough. Perhaps because it was only really interesting for 2 days.

I think these kinds of changes need to be put into a broader plan. We need to have a process for onboarding new people.

Also adding link back to the Prairie Initiative discussion on this:
https://groups.drupal.org/node/136154

tim.plunkett’s picture

tim.plunkett
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Primary language English
Location Philadelphia
CreditAttribution: tim.plunkett commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)
Issue tags: -onboarding

This was closed (fixed) as of October 2, 2012.
Feel free to open a follow-up issue.

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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CreditAttribution: mgifford commented
Status: Closed (fixed) » Active

It needs to be evaluated. Follow-up issues have been ignored.

If drumm or others want to permanently close this thread, fine. I think it's worth discussing though.

Did the implementation of the mentor field fix @sun's perceived problems?

tim.plunkett’s picture

tim.plunkett
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Location Philadelphia
CreditAttribution: tim.plunkett commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

@mgifford please familiarize yourself with https://drupal.org/node/156119, which explains that issues marked closed (fixed) should "not be reopened, but instead a new issue should be opened, providing a link to the closed issue"

sun’s picture

sun
Primary language German
Location Karlsruhe
CreditAttribution: sun commented
  1. Everyone is critically busy to get D8 out of the door. It's hard to find extra time for nice-to-have drupal.org improvements right now. That should explain the silence on the follow-up issues.
  2. The "Mentored by" field is actively used and filled-in on almost all drupal.org user profiles in the meantime. At minimum, we have data by now.
  3. This means that drupal.org members and contributors are actively considering mentors and mentoring to be a thing. Because it now is a thing, we've raised awareness on the importance of mentoring someone else.
  4. Drupal core did see many new contributors, and in particular, many new people that became contributors through mentoring. This success is certainly not the result of the new profile field (much rather the Core Mentoring program in IRC and at camps/cons), but all of this goes hand in hand with each other, and we're walking in the right direction.

As @tim.plunkett mentioned, I also think this issue should be closed again.

There are possibilities to further improve these contributor-to-contributor relationships in the future (and it certainly doesn't help that the "mentored-by" listing pages are disabled due to high traffic on d.o currently), but in terms of overall goals, we don't want to revert this improvement; we only want to advance on status quo.

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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Primary language English
CreditAttribution: mgifford commented
Issue tags: +onboarding

Thanks for your input @sun. Always appreciated.

1) Certainly, there are a lot of folks who are busy to get D8 out. Lots of big issues. Thanks! Most of the changes that need to be made now are outside of my skill set. As you know, I'm looking to help push that along too.

I do think it is bigger than that though. The Prairie Initiative had lots of good ideas back in 2011 & 2012, and it's totally understandable that they couldn't all be implemented, however, it's now 2014. We were focused on D7 in 2011, we were focused on upgrades to Drupal modules in 2012, we were focused on upgrading Drupal.org in 2013, now we're focused on the D8 release, but this cycle will begin again after the release of D8.

Maybe the same people pushing Core can't be the same people pushing improvements to d.o?

Maybe there is too much focused in the hands of too few. Would seem that way if 5 folks can implement a change like this in 48hrs.

2) Absolutely, the data is useful. Good to hear that it is being used by active members. It wasn't a mistake to add this field. I do think it's a good idea.

3) Totally mentor-ship is an important concept. It's did help to establish the idea. We can probably do more to explain the why/how it matters as part of onboarding new users.

4) Great to hear that this, and the other efforts have helped to bring on more contributors to D8.

Having evaluative comments like this is really useful. We do need to be able to reflect as to whether the changes we've made have had the desired results. Doing that in a new issue seems a bit ridiculous.

I'm all for advancing on the work that's already been done. Definitely am not interested in reverting it.

The upgrade to D7 certainly has not been smooth. Hopefully the remaining wrinkles get sorted out soon.

But we have to be able to innovate, evaluate & improve Drupal.org on a faster time scale. It has to be be given a priority which is as important as Core work.

We are a community that collaboratively develops software. If we don't nurture that community, we won't be able to effectively develop the software together.