On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 10:35 AM, Neal Gompa <ngompa13@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 3:32 AM, Miroslav Suchý <msuchy@redhat.com> wrote:
> I had the talk [1] about Fedora Sponsorship process at Flock. And we had
> very interesting follow-up discussion.
>
> We come up with several improvements, which should be easy to implement and
> may improve the process a lot. I am posting it here so more people can see
> that and join the discussion.
>

Overall, I think the biggest problem with our Fedora contributor
on-boarding process is that it's not so easy to discover people to
help people get started. One thing I think Mageia (the other
distribution I'm primarily involved in) does better is the discovery
bit. As part of the on-boarding process[1], new contributors are
encouraged to jump into a dedicated IRC channel (#mageia-mentoring)
where they can meet people to help them through the process. Something
like this might make it easier for people to find sponsors and find a
mentor to teach them about how to make packages and be a Fedora packager.
Perhaps having a mailing list and an IRC channel for this in Fedora
might help make this process smoother.

[1]: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Becoming_a_Mageia_Packager


Yeah, one thing that I remember when I was trying to become a packager is that the instructions for how to get sponsored on the wiki contained (and still contain) the phrase "When submitting a new package, usually a sponsor finds you", which I think is a bit... overly optimistic in many situations. Also at the time I was intimidated by the prospect of getting involved with discussions on this list and IRC, which didn't help. 

I looked at the Mageia how-to-become-a-packager process briefly a while ago (my laptop dual-boots Fedora and Mageia, although I am primarily a Fedora person), and I did notice how it seemed more hands on than ours. A dedicated place for new contributors to go and meet potential sponsors or other mentors, be that IRC or a mailing list, would probably be a good idea.

Ben Rosser