Bids-specification: CONTRIBUTING.md vs. BIDS Contributor Guide

[nicholst]

The Extending the BIDS specification section of BIDS v1.1.2-dev currently only points to the G-doc based BIDS Contributor guide and doesn't mention CONTRIBUTING.md.

Conversely, CONTRIBUTING.md doesn't mention the BIDS Contributor guide.

I was just about to lodge a tiny PR to change the standard to point solely to CONTRIBUTING.md but I now see that the BIDS Contributor guide has a lot that isn't in CONTRIBUTING.md, in particular on creating drafts of extensions in Google docs.

Should we (a) merge the content of the BIDS Contributor guide guide into CONTRIBUTING.md? Or just (b) edit the Extending the BIDS specification to additionally point to CONTRIBUTING.md?

[emdupre]

Personally, I read CONTRIBUTING as geared towards the process of making a contribution (i.e., how to open PRs). The BIDS Contributor guide, meanwhile, seems more oriented towards the decision to create a new BEP and some guidelines for that process.

Since it seems that there's a distinction in the goals of these two documents, I'd probably keep them as two separate files but have them point to one another !

[sappelhoff]

I agree with @emdupre - however I think that it'd be smart to link from one guide to the other and vice versa, with a brief sentence on describing the goals of each of the guides.

Would you be fine with that solution @nicholst?

[emdupre]

One other idea -- maybe we could rename the BIDS Contributor Guide to something less likely to create confusion with CONTRIBUTING.md. What about BEP Lead Guidelines or something similar ?

[nicholst]

Yes @emdupre I think changing the name of the non-CONTRIBUTING.md file is a great idea.

So we have CONTRIBUTING.md as a traditional "how do I contribute PRs to this github-based standard?", vs. an external "BIDS Extension Proposals: A guide" type document. This would be great.

[effigies]

:+1:

[sappelhoff]

done: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pWmEEY-1-WuwBPNy5tDAxVJYQ9Een4hZJM06tQZg8X4/

thanks everybody!