Big picture (Feb 2011)

How to use this page

Add a section with your thoughts. It's okay if this page is messy. It's okay if your page is a beautiful grandiose dream-like vision.

Problems

• The project page doesn't have a reason to exist.
• https://openhatch.org/bugs/issue251 - glyph points out there's missing features from a developer point of view.

Krzysztof's take on OpenHatch.org

OpenHatch, even tough it is a very young project, has proven to deliver what it promises (take me as a perfect example). Like any other young project, however, it gets some things right from the very beginning, while some areas need time to evolve (plus a lot of effort). Recent feedback from glyph is a proof of that.

The following content is my attempt to identify ideas and concepts that should work toward achieving OpenHatch's mission. Although the observation is not based on data of any kind (be it raw numbers or simple feedback), it can still prove useful as a visionary playground for future releases.

Identified issues

New contributor experience

First and foremost, OpenHatch is about lowering barriers of entry. We want to connect new contributors with mentors as fast as possible, without unnecessary hurdles in between. Currently we achieve that by:

• mentor search
• project search
• bug recommendations
• missions
• embeddable I want to help button
• Build helper
• etc.

These features serve their purpose pretty well. The problem arises when user finds a project that he is willing to work on (by devoting his free time and effort). Take GIMP for an example: the Chatter is not filled in, there is no mentor for this project and a link to project's website is nowhere to find. Even if there was a link, there is not guarantee that the project's page will provide all the information required to seamlessly start contributing.

I believe that as part of the OpenHatch's mission, we should devote some 'resources' to encouraging project maintainers and projects mentors to lower that nasty entry barrier for a newcomer. Build helper is a step in the right direction, but we need to do more. For example:

• Introduce a mechanism, which notifies free mentors that there are projects which require a mentor
• Encourage project maintainers to fill in information on their project(s).
• Create some sort of guidelines section on how projects can lower barriers of entry. A good example is instructing Open Source projects to have a one- to two-step automatic build process, IRC channel or clear Getting started guide.
• Add more missions and make them more visible
• Provide links to online and offline resources on popular technologies (e.g. Git Community Book, HGINIT, Dive into Python 3 etc.)

Mentor experience

Open Source projects need contributors who keep the project going (doh!). Here we need

by sticking around and contributing, one way or other.

seeks contributors who can stick around and contribute to the project

What works:

• I want help button

Lack of awesomeness

The site has a lot of awesome features, but does not tell how it can make users awesome.

'Yet another profile' problem

Ohloh, Github, blogs

Evangelist

Be an example!

Great, now what?

Now, the hard part.