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How to recognize outstanding contributors?
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A question has come up a few times recently that I’d like to throw out for discussion: How can we show some of our outstanding contributors that we recognize and appreciate their efforts, without offending other contributors who are also doing outstanding work?
While I was in Nuremberg last week, I had several conversations (and a few online) about the fact that we have some really excellent community contributors and wouldn’t it be great if we could have awards or something to say “thanks!” and recognize those folks publicly.
I know of quite a few people who definitely deserve an award for all their hard work on openSUSE — both inside and outside of Novell’s walls. And that’s just the people I’ve noticed — which is to say, no matter how you slice it, we’d end up missing some people.
Thoughts and suggestions?
Have a kind of ‘contributor of the month’ – that way whoever ‘wins’ a particular month would feel chuffed. At the same time, other contributors wouldn’t begrudge him/her the luck and could think ‘well, maybe I’ll win next month’.
What about reusing idea.opensuse.org for that? For me it seems a great idea. Idea Pool could be a central place for openSUSE to post requests for enhancements etc.
Not sure what it has to do with this blog’s topic but a successor of idea.opensuse.org is being worked on.
Some people have more time, and some have less. Second point is amount of knowledge. The third is lack of lazyness (lack of procrastination).
When talking about openSUSE heroes, don’t forget the upstream folks, who do very much – KDE, GNOME, X.org, Linux. Without it, openSUSE wouldn’t exist.
Outstanding contributor you can recognize by making little things that make people very happy.
I think Novell is well aware what it owes upstream and it’s paying member of KDE e.V., GNOME Foundation and alike and sponsoring developer conferences. And the upstream communities recognize outstanding contributors in their rows themselves (eg Akademy Awards).
I don’t think there’s much danger of forgetting upstream, but I’m specifically thinking about the people who directly work on openSUSE for the moment.
Perhaps, a page for each release with an acknowledgement of registered openSUSE contributors would be appropriate.
Dietrich T. Schmitz
Linux IT Consultant
http://www.dtschmitz.com
FWIW, this is a topic that has come across the table to those of us on the openSUSE Board. To be sure, the biggest problem we immediately encountered was “Well wait a minute… What about this person? And that person?” What is the measurement of outstanding? Number of hours? Number of articles/blogs? Code?
Generally, I like the idea of a monthly recognition, as suggested by Ciaran. But who does the work and investigation to ensure fair awarding? How do we ensure that such a panel has enough high-level overview of everything going on within the project to make the best decision, month after month?
Personally, I’m more inclined to support the notion of a categorical award system. A system where we determine the categories for awards and then have peers within that category nominate candidates for that award. But is that fair? And with a project as large and diverse as ours, would we run the risk of having too many categories?
I’d like to see the community debate this and come up with some ideas, or even shoot it down if need be.
@Dietrich. We already have that in the form of openSUSE Membership. All recognized contributors become members and you have to demonstrate contribution in order to become a member.
@everyone in the community: Regardless of if and when we do come up with a system of recognition, I hope you know you have the utmost thanks from the Project for your hard work.
“I’d like to see the community debate this and come up with some ideas, or even shoot it down if need be. ”
Hence the reason for the post…
Hmm… interesting point. We’ve had the program where the Project sends free boxed editions of openSUSE to people who have put forth good effort in creating and launching a release. I can tell you that when I received an email telling me I got a free boxed edition last summer for my work on 11.0, I felt pretty happy that my work had been recognized by the project.
But that isn’t very public (although I do hope it continues
).Perhaps a “Contributor of the week”, rolled into openSUSE Weekly News? Or make “People of openSUSE” more of where those recognized contributors are interviewed?
The free box program also exists for openSUSE 11.1 release. And isn’t “People of openSUSE” about recognizing valuable contributors already?
The ultimate reward for openSUSE contributors is quality releases .. and that includes the x.1 ones. Tell that to your bossman.
Disclaimer: It’s the bitterness speaking, it isn’t me
I agree with cb400f: what makes contributors happy is:
a) A quality release, where their work can be enjoyed.
b) A niceeee Geeko plush
Ok, b is a bit personal probably
Bye,
Alberto
I agree with Kevin, it was really a pleasant surprise for me when I received a “free box” letter at the first time. It really helped and encouraged me to work more for openSUSE as I saw that I am not a nameless enthusiast for it, but my work is noticed. Perhaps, all you need is to give people some more clear way to see their names written somewhere on official page, like “Now openSUSE released and we’d like to say THANK YOU to the community members who helped us working on this release. Your contributions are invaluable: John Smith I, John Smith II, etc.”
P.S. If this box-program is not person-sorted, then I’ll get two boxes and three T-shirts for my work on 11.1 and Weekly News. Maybe you’ll find the way to summarize efforts and let active contributors to change a reward to smth else in novell-shop (for instance, 2 T-shirts and a box for a branded bag or something
), cause next time I’ll get even more )))