Mastodon: [Github meta] Bounties

[Cassolotl]

Some small and easy fixes and polishes to existing features go ignored by developers in favour of shiny new features.

It'd be nice to have some of the easy usability fixes and bugs get done in a reasonable timeframe, instead of being ignored by the big name devs and having to wait for a random benevolent one-off fix by a drifting charitable developer. Like this one, which took over a year and a half despite being labeled fit for beginners, priority high.

How about a fixed amount for every PR merged out of the Patreon fund, to motivate people to fix some of the small random stuff? Doesn't have to be huge, just some pocket money - it'd get lots of the easy stuff sorted pretty quickly.

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• [ ] I searched or browsed the repo’s other issues to ensure this is not a duplicate.

[xmakina]

There is also a https://liberapay.com/Mastodon/income/ which might be good as it's for the whole project and already has some leftover funds

[Cassolotl]

Sure, devs could be paid out of Liberapay or Patreon funds. It currently all goes to Gargron, so it doesn't matter where it comes from.

[Cassolotl]

Something I just posted that is getting positive responses on Mastodon is a bounty weekend.

• Start and end dates and times are specified a week in advance.
• Gargron and other devs who can test and merge brew up a lot of coffee.
• The rules: $5 [or whatever gets good PRs!] per bugfix submitted and merged between those dates and times, sent one week later (pending testing).
• Lots of low-hanging easy-peasy bugs get fixed very quickly.

[Gargron]

Attempt Nr. 2 to re-claim the "mastodon" username on BountySource. I tried before and didn't receive a response. Tried "tootsuite" too. Let's see if it works this time.

[Cassolotl]

I've used bountysource before, a few years back, and it was not very user-friendly. But it's better than nothing, and maybe it has improved since I tried it! If there's anything I can do to help with this let me/us know.

[BillyWM]

Frankly I'd rather receive nothing that an insultingly low payment. At $5 you'll eventually attract a lot of hasty, low-quality submissions from the type of developers that make their living on Upwork, once they get wind of it.

I'd contribute small front-end fixes just because they're ones I'm interested in, but the 900+ issues aren't tagged very well. That seems to be the bigger problem.

(And I see "good first issue" used in many other repos instead of "good for beginners". Might be worth using that common language)

[Cassolotl]

The $5 was an example - I'm in the UK and I'm not a developer so I'm pretty clueless about dollars and fair rates of pay, but I used dollars because Patreon does. So it could be whatever seems reasonable, I'm sure. Wouldn't low quality submissions not get merged and therefore not get paid?

Plus if BountySource works out, you can work on the issues where people have pledged the most collectively, rather than a flat rate situation - like, Gargron would pledge the flat rate, but then others could add to it.

"Fit for beginners" is in the list of tags in the front page issue list filters dropdown but that list is longgggg, so going by the most commonly used is probably good?

[ghost]

@Gargron Why is it so important to have the correct username on bountysource?