Content Access has 64,595 sites currently reported as using it, over 250 open issues and is seeking one or possibly more co-maintainers according to the project page. Despite having so many sites using it there are 75 open bugs and this project is listed as providing Maintenance fixes only. The project page may be out of date, but looking at activity in contrib on d.o it occurred to me that we don't really have a good process for bringing on co-maintainers. Not that there isn't a process to make it happen, but it is all very mechanical.

Ultimately there are always going to be many more users than developers in any successful project. That being said, for a popular module like this, a module maintainer should be able to choose. I've tried to outline #2185511: Highlight User Contributions & What They Can Do Next in Issue Queue how to encourage people to start participating in projects. A project like this one that is actively Seeking co-maintainer(s), should have some way to more actively remind folks in the issue queue that help is being requested.

Now it could be just dealing with the issue queue or building up enough knowledge about the module that they can effectively test a number of outstanding patches. Maybe it's working on the D8 version. Maybe something like documentation or tests. In an actively used module there is always going to be something.

Having a goal can also help. I've proposed #2186377: Highlight projects that follow Best Practices but I'm really not sure what can arbitrarily be evaluated.

I started off by looking incentives for getting people involved in the issue queue and thought both of these might help - #2138397: Highlight Flattr, Paypal or Whatever Opportunities on Issue Pages & #2177459: Highlight Supporting Organizations in the Issue Queue

Having new ways to alert people in the Drupal community how they might engage is useful. http://www.comaintainer.com was set up to try to gather together information about modules like this one that were looking for support maintaining the code base.

I'm starting this issue in the hopes of having a discussion with this community about what would help more people step up and take on the responsibility of helping to maintain this module.

Comments

Nigel Cunningham’s picture

Are you still after co-maintainers? I'm looking at using the D8 version of this module and rather concerned by the fact that it hasn't had a commit in almost a year at the time of writing. I have a fair amount of other work (and modules), but will do what I can to help if you'd like.

kscheirer’s picture

How about this person offering to maintain it? #2719923: Request to become co-maintainer of Content Access module

gisle’s picture

There has been several offer to co-maintain Content Access, and all has so far been ignored.

I offered to maintain the project two weeks ago (see #3135081: Requesting ownership of Content Access), and that offer too, has been ignored. Since the owner of this project is unresponsive, I plan to follow the path outlined procedures for Dealing with unsupported (abandoned) projects to get maintained again.

Btw. the site http://www.comaintainer.com/ (mentioned in the issue summary) is unable to talk to its database.

gisle’s picture

Hi NigelCunningham,
and I happy to hear you're interested in joining this important project as a co-maintainer.

I am actively looking for co-maintainers. However, I would like to see some of your code first. If you still are interested, pick any issue in this project that requires code to be written and submit a patch. I promise that I'll review it. If your code is good, I'll sign you up.

Please also state whether you are git vetted (aks. allowed to opt into security coverage). I am not going to reject those that are not vetted, but I'll do a more thorough review. That will benefit us both.

gisle’s picture

Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)

Postponing until there is a patch to review.

Nigel Cunningham’s picture

Hi @gisle.

I don't have the spare time to prepare a patch for you at the moment. What I could do is point you at my other work, such as Config entity revisions.

Regards,

Nigel

gisle’s picture

NigelCunningham,
if you don't have the spare time to prepare a patch, do you have the spare time to be a co-maintainer of this project?

I don't add co-maintainers just to give them bragging rights.

You can help improve the project without being co-maintainer. I am a responsive maintainer, and try review and commit patches in a timely manner, and I always make sure the person, company and customer receives credit for creating, improving and reviewing patches.

Nigel Cunningham’s picture

Hi gisle.

I don't care about bragging rights. This project had seemed to me to be unmaintained and I wanted to make use of it and improve the code for the customer for whom I was going to use the module. Given what you say, perhaps I don't need to be worried about the maintenance of the project and can happily leave you to it.

By the way, can I suggest being a little gentler in your next reply? Perhaps you didn't mean to be curt but it's certainly possible to take it that way.

Regards,

Nigel

gisle’s picture

By the way, can I suggest being a little gentler in your next reply?

I am sorry. I didn't mean to offend.

But as a contributor here, I've had some bad experiences in the past, when taking up people's offers to co-maintain, only to experience they providing no help, while bragging about being a co-maintainer on their profile page.

I think a project maintainer and co-maintainer of a project need to regularly monitor the project's issue queue and respond to new issues in a timely manner. While not fixing every bug, granting ever feature request or solving every support request (we are all provide assistance for free here, so to make a living we focus on the things customers pay us to fix), being present is an important part of being a maintainer IMHO.

If you are too busy for that (and I don't blame you), you can still help out by providing and reviewing those patches that you need for your own customers.

Nigel Cunningham’s picture

Hi again and thanks for your reply.

I do have more than enough to do already, so let's just leave things as they are - assuming I do end up using this module (I was looking at it as part of a big catchup upgrade that's on hold at the moment), I'll submit / review / use / ... patches as I have time and apart from that just be an appreciative onlooker :)

gisle’s picture

Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Closed (outdated)
Issue tags: -

mgifford:
I do not think the problem with this project is the lack of co-maintainers. It is simply that not enough people seem to have the time to create and review patches to solve the outstanding problems. People can do that without committing to being a co-maintainer of the project, but even that low level engagement seem to be beyond what most users of this project are able to contribute.

I appreciate your efforts regarding this, re: #2185511: Highlight User Contributions & What They Can Do Next in Issue Queue.

I don't think we need to encourage co-maintainers. We need to encourage contributions.

Currently, to encourage contributions we provide suggestions about what folks should prioritise to help move a project to a stable release (e.g. #3020436: Release 7.x-1.2 and #3143952: [meta] Content Access release 2.0.0). We also incentivise contributors by making sure that those who help out get proper attribution and credit for their work.

There has been no new suggestions here since May, so it is time to close.