I've heard many maintainers of modules complain about the difficulty of folks who apply for maintainer roles, are given that permission, commit the patches they care about and then loose interest in the module.
I think it would be useful to differentiate the maintainer role. If there are more roles which a contributor can be granted then it may increase their sense responsibility for the project.
It can also be useful to give an official role for the many tasks that are useful to maintain a module properly. Yes, you need someone who understands Drupal & what the module does. It also really helps to have a solid documentation.
Not all projects are all that complicated or active, but a lot of the critical modules that many of us use are and all of the responsibility falls on one or maybe two people (most of the time) who are the active maintainers of the code base.
This isn't a final list, but having different roles could be useful. Right now there's mostly a list of general out-of-date information on how to be a co-maintainer:
The roles need to be tied to a clear list of expectations so that people know what is expected of them and what they are signing up to.
Comments
Comment #1
mgiffordComment #2
mgiffordThis is one story of how vijaycs85 became a maintainer of the Date module:
----
How I got in (part of current process):
Step 1: Saw https://twitter.com/CatherineOmega/status/388037250896121856
Step 2: Created https://drupal.org/node/2108697
Step 3: Fixed by chx at https://drupal.org/comment/8140997#comment-8140997
Step 4: Found podarok shares my interests. So made as co-maintainer.
Step 5: We made a minor release (with 20+ fixes) in Dec 2013 - https://drupal.org/node/2161141
Step 6: Finally created http://www.drupaldate.org/ to make our scrum team run like other agile team :)
What can be improved:
1. Would be great to have a place where easily go through list of largly used modules that don't have/need maintainers - we can name it as 'Drupal.org vacancy list' :)
2. One-click application processing - By number of issues contributed by a user to a project (that needs maintainer), we can have a block 'Would you like to help maintain project XYZ? Click here'
3. Automated application processing system.
4. Also would be great to have list of active modules - recent releases + active issue list = trusted or highly supported module (or module with lots of bugs, depending on issues getting burned).
----
Ideas 1, 2 & 3 will probably be their own issues in the future, but wanted to put this somewhere on d.o.
I'd love to see this type of functionality built into d.o http://www.comaintainer.com/
Could easily fall into a sidebar note like #2193871: Create an Action Block for Short Messages for Users & Visitors
Comment #3
mgiffordComment #4
mgiffordComment #5
mgiffordFrom #2200549-7: Seeking co-maintainer(s) I wondered it might be easiest to start with just popularizing roles that are already essentially enabled on d.o:
I've changed them around a bit. Mostly because I thought it might sound more official than what we have here:
This isn't important for modules that don't have a lot of users, but for those that suddenly find themselves with 10k sites using it, it could be very handy to have clearly defined responsibilities for the various different tasks that are common in managing a project.
Usually the person who developed it, is most interested and most capable of keeping up with approving patches. The less of the other stuff of managing a project that they have to worry about, the better.
We also want to have a ladder of responsibilities for large modules so that new folks can get involved, find it enjoyable, then find ways to do more.
Comment #6
mgiffordComment #7
mgifford@Merlin wrote in his blog in 2011:
Maybe having options for different roles could help encourage projects to start building teams that can provide more usable products for customers. The lack of a revenue stream is a bit of a problem though. There are lots of thoughts about that though.
Comment #8
mgiffordI like this idea from 2007 https://groups.drupal.org/node/4970
Better support for per-component maintainers:
Comment #9
geek-merlinAlthough this post is some years old, i only now stumbled upon it. And yes, it it resonates a lot.
I maintain some modules, started maintaining some, ans lost interest in others.
As a maintainer i want a standardized way to communicate what to expect from me and what not (and where help is appreciated).
As ecosystem participant i want other maintainers to clearly communicate.
Comment #10
avpadernoSince drupal.org is using Gitlab as git service, I guess this is not anymore feasible. The roles in a Gitlab repository are limited; adding new project roles on drupal.org would complicate the correspondence with those roles.
The plan is also to move project issues to Gitlab issues. That would probably further limit the possibility of adding new project roles on drupal.org.