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* https://openhatch.org/bugs/issue251 - glyph points out there's missing features from a ''developer'' point of view.
With all these silly wbesties, such a great page keeps my internet hope alive.
== Krzysztof's take on OpenHatch.org ==
OpenHatch, even though it is a very young project, has proven to deliver what it [https://openhatch.org/about/ 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 [http://irclogs.jackgrigg.com/irc.freenode.net/openhatch/2011-01-31#i_2523847 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 ===
Open Source projects need contributors who keep the project going (doh!). There are three types of contributors that we need to clearly distinguish:
* People who start their Open Source adventure
* Experienced people who want to work on Open Source project to help and/or learn new languages and technologies
* Experienced ''mentors'' who seek contributors
AFAIC that's the best anwesr so far!
==== Experienced contributor experience ====
Recurring contributors, who want to find new thing to work on, will most likely:
* Search a project to join
* '''Revive dead/comatose project'''
* Start a project of their own
We have got the first scenario pretty well covered, by the other two simply not. When it comes to project graveyard, we can provide facilities to mark projects as dead and we can mark them as such by periodically checking bug tracker for changes (issues getting resolved etc.).
I see, I suoppse that would have to be the case.
==== Lack of input/data ====
We need more input on how well we are helping people (contributors, mentors) to achieve their goals. '''Glyph''' helped to spark discussion on how we can improve OpenHatch from experienced developer's point of view, but we need more:
* Missions: completed, partially completed, average time taken to complete
* User profile completeness
* Project profile completeness
* Project imports
* etc.
==== Lack of awesomeness ====
The site has '''a lot''' of awesome features, but does not tell how it can make ''users'' awesome. We need to change the way we communicate with new and recurring visitors to our site. We need to show some benefits that come with involvement in Open Source projects, for example:
* Team-work experience
* Hands-on experience with release cycles [in mature projects]
* Practical experience with technologies (languages, version control etc.)
* Improved communication skills
* Being part of something awesome
* etc.
We need to think ''why'' they came to OpenHatch in the first place and how we can not only help them accomplish their goals, but also invite more people to come.
==== People are lazy ====
Well, not all of them. But a lot of them are. I think that no one likes to yet again fill in and maintain his profile on at yet another website. We need a way to both integrate with existing services (blogs, source repositories) and also differentiate from them. The project importer feature works well (although it's ''very'' slow), but we need to do more so we convince people it's worthy to take time and maintain their profile information. We can achieve that by:
* Integrating Twitter to their profile pages (?)
* Integrating blogs (they also tell their Open Source story! (c) glyph)
* Initializing new profiles with information gathered from GitHub (e.g. repository language => user's skill), Ohloh and others
==== Game mechanics ====
Game mechanics is the new hotness. In our case, they might be usefull - we want new contributors to feel that they are making progress, be it by completing missions, being promoted to project maintainer or by closing bugs.
I personally think that ''missions'' is a good place to start leveraging game mechanics. We could introduce ''badges'' or ''titles'' system based on mission completeness and difficulty. But first, we need more missions which are build with game mechanics in mind.
Resources:
* [http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/scvngr-game-mechanics/ Scvngr: Secret game mechanics deck]
* [http://gamification.org/wiki/Encyclopedia Gamification.org]
==== Community ====
I think that the community map feature can be taken to entirely different level. It is already pretty awesome to discover other people in your town with similar believes and interests, but there is more to be done. Why not extend OpenHatch feature set with community events (similar to [http://www.meetup.com Meetup])? There are plenty of Open Source events going on, e.g. at universities, and it would be really good to promote such events on OpenHatch.org.
=== Great, now what? ===
Now, the hard part. We have limited resources (for now, at least) and a lot of things to do. To make the magic happen, we have to choose very narrow focus area for each milestone, so we are able to receive feedback and decide quickly whether we are going in the right direction. Otherwise we might end up with bloated website full of features that nobody use.
== Asheesh's take on OpenHatch.org as of today ==
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