Not obvious how to get involved with a project

This is a big problem, I think, but I'm not sure that having a list of "joinable" projects is the solution. I think the problem occurs when someone has already got to a project page -- they think "okay, now what?", wondering how to get involved. We could fix this with changes to the project page. Exactly what those changes would be, I don't know.

As you say, the feeling when someone falls into a project's homepage is "how can I join?". This should not happen in Launchpad, which is made supposedly to solve this right this problem.

I do think that being able to list (i.e. via a filter) to "joinable" project whould help very much, but that is just an idea. Another possibility whould be the self-creation of a group when a project is uploaded. That would solve the antinatural issue of joining a team before joining the project they host. Anyway, this may alter too much the website architecture. Thus I propose the first solution as better.

Im not saying all projects to allow joining, since some people wants Launchpad to share files in a private (but open-sourced, of course) project. But it is needed to improve joining methods when you could potentially join a project. We need to ease quite a lot this feature, which I think there should be one of the main goals of Launchpad.

Any suggestions? Comments?

We used to state that joining a team is not required to contribute to a project; it is a security concept, not a organizational concept. Users may answer questions, triage bugs, write blueprints, register code branches without contacting any member of a team. That is still true, but team membership is required to join a mailing list, which is where a team would presumably discuss goals of the project.

I think Launchpad must publish how a project is organised to uninitiated users. Users can learn the project's goals, and the users and teams that are responsible for doing them. A user then has an understanding of how he can participate.

I've long felt that there should be a project-centric view of Launchpad, perhaps not to the exclusivity of today's view of the world, but just to make a stronger connection between teams and the projects they're related to. As a long-time open sourcer, I have a very project-centric view of the world; when I create a new project, I almost always want several teams, roles and mailing lists, e.g. a -users team, a -dev team, perhaps an -announce team and a -commits team (where log messages go), each with mailing lists. I might also want a separate -committers team which may not have a mailing list, but which would control access to the official branches.

I think we don't need to change LP's architecture to provide this view, just map current concepts onto new ui and perhaps adding a few additional links to present the existing information in a different, more natural way.

I'm still not sure about the scope of the work to do this, but it feels "biggish".

This issue is will be addressed in https://dev.launchpad.net/VersionThreeDotO/Registry/StoryCards#Link%20teams%20and%20people%20to%20projects%20for%20informational%20purposes

The project page needs a very prominent "Contact the $foo project" link. Otherwise, anonymous users will find the "Contact us" link at the bottom of the page, which goes to the launchpad feedback mailing list. The project should also be able to specify whether their contact link directs the user to send email, open a bug, or ask a question.

On Tue, 2009-04-21 at 17:15 +0000, Edwin Grubbs wrote:
> The project page needs a very prominent "Contact the $foo project" link.
> Otherwise, anonymous users will find the "Contact us" link at the bottom
> of the page, which goes to the launchpad feedback mailing list. The
> project should also be able to specify whether their contact link
> directs the user to send email, open a bug, or ask a question.

I agree with this. I'd like to note though, that my bug was specifically
about *getting involved*, not *contacting*.

-Rob

Working on the project page, this is one of the primary things to address.

The new get involved porlet invites users to participate in each of the official applications. The page now presents the latest activities in the project such as questions, bugs, blueprints, sprints, and announcements.

On Sun, 2009-08-23 at 19:25 +0000, Curtis Hovey wrote:
> The new get involved porlet invites users to participate in each of the
> official applications. The page now presents the latest activities in
> the project such as questions, bugs, blueprints, sprints, and
> announcements.
>
> ** Changed in: launchpad-registry
> Status: Triaged => Fix Committed

Its great that it does this, but I strongly disagree that it fixes the
bug.

The duplicates:
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/launchpad-registry/+bug/137793 talks
about the related *teams* to a project.
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/launchpad-foundations/+bug/191111
likewise.
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/launchpad-registry/+bug/201122 again!.

Participating in official applications is not at all related to being
invited to join the discussion mailing list, or the bug mgmt team. One
can observe what launchpad is missing by looking at what launchpad
metadata users of launchpad document outside it, or in the project
summary.

-Rob

This is not a bug without scope. The new design meets my understanding of what is need to address this. Can you provide anything else that the Launchpad application can do solve this.

On Sun, 2009-08-23 at 21:19 +0000, Curtis Hovey wrote:
> This is not a bug without scope. The new design meets my understanding
> of what is need to address this. Can you provide anything else that the
> Launchpad application can do solve this.

Is it deployed on edge so I can accurately comment on what it does vs
what the various bugs were asking for? (I don't want to speculate - if
you think its fixed then I should look at it in detail)

-Rob

A person's initial interaction with a project probably *doesn't* start by joining the team. People do seem to think it should work this way, but given Launchpad's model of teams for access control it doesn't seem appropriate at all.

It seems to me the most appropriate way is to have a 'get involved with this project' link that just goes to some project-provided text, plus also some links. Then they can say eg any of

Please talk to us on our channel/list/forums
Please have a look for bugs tagged 'easy' to start on
Please read our developer guide at http://...
This project is only developed by example.com staff but anyone is welcome to help with bugs
....

You could formulate standard links to eg the bug tracker or parts of the Launchpad guide.

On Sun, 2009-08-23 at 21:45 +0000, Martin Pool wrote:
> A person's initial interaction with a project probably *doesn't* start
> by joining the team. People do seem to think it should work this way,
> but given Launchpad's model of teams for access control it doesn't
> seem
> appropriate at all.

For 'the management teams', I agree. however there are *other* important
teams - in particular mailing lists. Which is what the bug I filed, that
was marked as a duplicate of this bug, is about. (And from my reading
the other 2 dups are saying the same thing).

-Rob

The project description field asks for this information, and they will be linked if they are provided. It is up to the project owner to provide it. Project owers and drivers can also make announcements for participation.

The only thing that is obvious to Launchpad are the official applications. There are implied activities such as bugs, blueprints, etc that users can can see, from the project page, but I do not think the application can deduce a message from this.

I honesty do not know what else we can put into the application. The problem belongs to the project owner, and I believe in-experiences maintainers do not understand this. We stopped reviewing older projects because it is clear the owner does not know how to manage an open source project and grow a community. Most hosted projects in launchpad die of crib-death.

Its true that users may not know to create lists or how to get
descriptions of them visible on the project page.

*I* was asking, in my bug, for a facility to tell launchpad about lists
and other things. Not as plain urls, but as 'this team is the users
lists for this project', or something similar.

While launchpad doesn't have the ability to associate teams with
projects other than via management roles, it will be hard to discover
related artifacts like list archives and so on.

-Rob

On Sun, 2009-08-23 at 22:29 +0000, Robert Collins wrote:
> Its true that users may not know to create lists or how to get
> descriptions of them visible on the project page.
>
> *I* was asking, in my bug, for a facility to tell launchpad about
> lists
> and other things. Not as plain urls, but as 'this team is the users
> lists for this project', or something similar.
>
> While launchpad doesn't have the ability to associate teams with
> projects other than via management roles, it will be hard to discover
> related artifacts like list archives and so on.

So - I've checked edge. And the new portlet doesn't address this bug.

Its always been obvious how to get to the bugs/answers/code/translations
for a project once you are used to launchpad.

Can we open this bug again, or should I undup my bug (which really was
rather specific) ?

-Rob

Fixed released in launchpad-project 2.2.8.

On Thu, 2009-09-24 at 08:13 +0000, Curtis Hovey wrote:
> Fixed released in launchpad-project 2.2.8.

I still disagree that this was fixed; should I file a new bug, or
un-duplicate this?

-Rob