Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] hobbyist recruiting

[Jason Cooper <jason@lakedaemon.net>]

On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 09:26:30PM +0200, Greg KH wrote:
> On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 09:16:02PM +0200, Levente Kurusa wrote:
> > Of course, the Eudyptula challenge did bring some new developers,
> > but as far as I see most of them posted only one patch/patchset.
> 
> How do you know who is doing this challenge and who isn't?  I see a lot
> of new people coming in with multiple sets of patches for cleanups and
> good fixes over the past month or so.

Is it mostly in the staging tree?  That's where I really got my feet wet
when I started.  Assisting with code cleanup isn't glamorous, but it's a
good place to learn the ropes.  And the staging tree is, imho, a more
receptive place for cleanup patches.  Since the code isn't kernel
qwality to begin with.

> Trying to track where they actually come from is nothing I really care
> about, and is probably impossible.

Agreed.

> If you track the number of unique people I take patches from, it's
> going up, as is our number of unique contributors to the kernel overall.
> It's been constantly increasing for the past 8 years, ever since I
> started tracking the kernel development statistics.

Cool, I didn't know you were actively tracking that.  Is the data
publicly hosted?  Is that based on merged patches, or posted emails?

> > Maybe, there is a way so that they will stay and work more?
> 
> I have loads of work for people to do if they want to do it:
> 	drivers/staging/*/TODO
> 
> > Keep them somehow in the game, i.e. badges? Mozilla's Open Badges?
> 
> Gamifaction?  Really?  No.

Pointing to the TODO lists is sufficient.  I don't think we would be
doing the community any favors by encouraging developers who want a
cookie for everything they did.

My primary goal is to draw attention to the issue of aggressive mail
filtering, new devs can pop up anywhere, and acknowledging them.  By
acknowledge, I mean answering the email, and treating them like everyone
else.  But we have to spot the emails first.

thx,

Jason.