Plots2: Improvement in FTO process

[grvsachdeva]

Hi everyone!

There are some concerns regarding first-timer-only issues:

1. Backlog of incomplete FTOs (both because ppl may be discouraged, and because it shows a lot of issues piling up on code.publiclab.org that aren't actually still available) -- via @jywarren
2. New contributors can't mention reviewer teams and sometimes this leads to delay
3. New contributors claim issues but don't work on that for a week or more
4. New contributors can't find unclaimed issues to get started

Solutions:

1. How about giving a week's time to new contributors to try the FTO? Yes, some orgs consider the issue to be claimed only when PR is raised against it but as we are first-time contributors friendly org so we need to give them some time to start/explore. Agreed?

Feel free to present the solution against mentioned issues and feel free to add more concerns to the list. Thanks!

@publiclab/community-reps @publiclab/reviewers @publiclab/plots2-reviewers @publiclab/is-reviewers

[SidharthBansal]

I agree with one week suggestion. Thanks

On Wed, Mar 6, 2019, 2:56 AM Gaurav Sachdeva [e-mail]
wrote:

Hi everyone!

There are some concerns regarding first-timer-only issues:

1. Backlog of incomplete FTOs (both because ppl may be discouraged,
   and because it shows a lot of issues piling up on code.publiclab.org
   that aren't actually still available) -- via @jywarren
   https://github.com/jywarren
2. New contributors can't mention reviewer teams and sometimes this
   leads to delay
3. New contributors claim issues but don't work on that for a week or
   more
4. New contributors can't find unclaimed issues to get started

Solutions:

1. How about giving a week's time to new contributors to try the FTO?
   Yes, some orgs consider the issue to be claimed only when PR is raised
   against it but as we are first-time contributors friendly org so we need to
   give them some time to start/explore. Agreed?

Feel free to present the solution against mentioned issues and feel free
to add more concerns to the list. Thanks!

@publiclab/community-reps
https://github.com/orgs/publiclab/teams/community-reps
@publiclab/reviewers https://github.com/orgs/publiclab/teams/reviewers
@publiclab/plots2-reviewers
https://github.com/orgs/publiclab/teams/plots2-reviewers
@publiclab/is-reviewers
https://github.com/orgs/publiclab/teams/is-reviewers

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[sashadev-sky]

me too!

[grvsachdeva]

@jywarren agreed on 1 week period too. Let's give 1 week to all the new-contributors for solving a FTO. I will open the FTO for including this word in the first-timer-only issue template.

Any ideas about other problems?

[harshithpabbati]

If any one takes it up then we will assign them so that other's would not ask for it

[grvsachdeva]

Actually, we try to assign the issue but their name doesn't show up when we try to add them using Assignees button on right, so giving :+1: to them is fine for now and we can ask other contributors politely to see other issues and I think, they understand in most cases.

[harshithpabbati]

Will go with this 👍

[jywarren]

Yeah, this sounds good. In general we should do our best to be friendly and
encouraging; maybe we can brainstorm a text we can use when we reply to
people, and all save it in our saved replies?
https://help.github.com/articles/working-with-saved-replies

Something like

"Hi! It's been about a week since your last reply so we'd like to open this
to other contributors. We'll close your pull request if you opened one, but
we encourage anyone else looking to take this issue up to check out your
work so far and try to build on it if they can. Finally, we'd love to work
more with you if you find the time and we're happy to find you a new place
to plug in!

To others -- this is now available for another newcomer; please leave a
comment if you'd like to take it up!"

What do you think?

On Wed, Mar 6, 2019 at 1:25 PM Harshith pabbati [e-mail]
wrote:

Will go with this 👍

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[grvsachdeva]

I am saving that reply to my GitHub account :smile:

[grvsachdeva]

Nice idea @jywarren :+1:

[sashadev-sky]

@jywarren Yes, saving that too! @gauravano I have thought about this too, specifically, what do you think is the most sensible way to "unassign" someone?
1) I was considering the idea of implementing "assigned" and "unassigned" labels that admins can add, but that would only really work efficiently if everyone is able to add this label or someone would have to stay on top of it regularly.
2) Alternatively, we could look into a system to automate this, like a bot with privileges that adds the label if someone mentions it and any user can mention.
3) delete all previous comments on it from yourself and from the last person who claimed it
4) delete the issue and re-open - or a bot that could do this for you if mention it?

Just trying to think of a way users don't have to scroll through the comments on every FTO to check if its open or not. And to take into consideration how to effectively keep things organized in a community with distributed responsibility as it scales.

[grvsachdeva]

I was considering the idea of implementing "assigned" and "unassigned" labels that admins can add, but that would only really work efficiently if everyone is able to add this label or someone would have to stay on top of it regularly.

I like this idea (we can think of using claimed/unclaimed, just a name change :see_no_evil: )

Alternatively, we could look into a system to automate this, like a bot with privileges that adds the label if someone mentions it and any user can mention.

The Image-Sequencer used to have GitMate for labeling and it also suggests whom to contact for support. Don't know, if it has such features like adding labels based on comments. We can explore other Github integrations/bots too. Anyone in your mind?

delete all previous comments on it from yourself and from the last person who claimed it

I don't think that's good idea, as many times, contributors ask their queries and discuss ideas on the issue. Their work/contributions/ideas/suggestions, etc are all precious to us as they are contributing their time for us. Same doubts can be in the mind of new assignees too, and previous comments can help in such case.

delete the issue and re-open - or a bot that could do this for you if mention it?

Same explanation as above. But, yeah we can close those issues which are too old and create new ones with top highlights/goals from older issue. As newer issues gain more attention.

Just trying to think of a way users don't have to scroll through the comments on every FTO to check if its open or not. And to take into consideration how to effectively keep things organized in a community with distributed responsibility as it scales.

:heart:

Thanks all!

[grvsachdeva]

@sashadev-sky @jywarren @SidharthBansal

[sashadev-sky]

@gauravano how did gitmate work for image sequencer? also just a note for the 1 week rule you're implementing, I think it would be good add something initially that emphasizes that this for contributors that just ghost, not ones actively asking for help. Like, "We encourage contributors to be respectful to the community and provide an update within a week of claiming an FTO. We're happy to keep the issue open and assigned to you as long as you need if you reach out for help, but if we don't see any activity a week after you claim it we may reassign it to give someone else a chance."

[jywarren]

Gitmate wasn't super, it used machine learning and would get things wrong
occasionally. I think maybe another bot or service could help? I did try to
get Gitmate to only work on some things, but wasn't able to get a
configuration that seemed to work for us.

On Fri, Mar 8, 2019 at 5:55 PM Sasha Boginsky [e-mail]
wrote:

@gauravano https://github.com/gauravano how did gitmate work for image
sequencer? also just a note for the 1 week rule you're implementing, I
think it would be good add something initially that emphasizes that this
for contributors that just ghost, not ones actively asking for help. Like,
"We encourage contributors to be respectful to the community and provide an
update within a week of claiming an FTO. We're happy to keep the issue open
and assigned to you as long as you need if you reach out for help, but if
we don't see any activity a week after you claim it we may reassign it to
give someone else a chance."

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[grvsachdeva]

@gauravano how did gitmate work for image sequencer? also just a note for the 1 week rule you're implementing, I think it would be good add something initially that emphasizes that this for contributors that just ghost, not ones actively asking for help. Like, "We encourage contributors to be respectful to the community and provide an update within a week of claiming an FTO. We're happy to keep the issue open and assigned to you as long as you need if you reach out for help, but if we don't see any activity a week after you claim it we may reassign it to give someone else a chance."

@sashadev-sky agree on this.

Let's add it to our first-timers-only template - https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/blob/master/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/first-timers-issue-template.md

Feel free to open PR or should I?

[jywarren]

I like assigned unassigned! One issue is that claimed FTOs take up space on code.publiclab.org, so maybe a fto-claimed label could let us show only unclaimed ones, or at least distinguish between ones being used already... We could also make it show ones without recent activity differently...?

[jywarren]

The in progress ones we could say "no open FTOs? Help someone else finish theirs!" Or something...?

[grvsachdeva]

@jywarren so until we find a bot I think we can label issues as claimed or unclaimed ourselves?

[jywarren]

Yes i think so too.

I'm also thinking about the welcome message helping to guide people who finished their own to help others... something like:

We'd love your help in assisting and supporting others who are doing their own first-timers-only issues, too, if you're interested!!! You can find more at https://code.publiclab.org#r=all
Thank you!!! 🎉 👍

We already do something like this in welcomebot, but we could make it more explicit even!

Hmm, is our welcomebot not working? I noticed first-timers-bot is also not working... hmm.....

https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/blob/66583fa259f3a46562a2a1b3fba3f53ffc49813f/.github/config.yml#L22-L27

[jywarren]

Hi, what if we just untag first-timers-only and tag fto-in-progress so that we can have a separate list of PRs that may need help?

Or maybe it's actually a good thing that FTOs continue to appear even if they're being worked on, so that people can see how they are supported and see what it's like to do one. If they all disappeared from that list when claimed, maybe that'd be a bad thing. So, maybe claimed/unclaimed makes sense.

[CleverFool77]

How about using tags assigned or unassigned. ?

[SidharthBansal]

Sure

On Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 8:08 PM Lekhika Dugtal [e-mail]
wrote:

How about using tags assigned or unassigned. ?

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[grvsachdeva]

I started labeling issues assigned from yesterday and I think it will help in sorting. Regarding bots, I will try to see about them later today. Thanks!

[sashadev-sky]

@gauravano I was going to offer it to you because I didn't want to impose on your issue but I saw you asked 6 days ago so I just went for it to speed things up. Please review and let me know your thoughts. I made a few updates

@jywarren I used a saved reply instead of the FTO bot so i'm not sure about the status of the bots. @gauravano were you going to look into this or are you referring to looking into new bots above?

[grvsachdeva]

Hey @sashadev-sky PR looks good, just a minor change required. @jywarren fixed the welcome bot, here the message - https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/pull/5079#issuecomment-473271789 :smile: .

yes, we need suggestions for new bots which can help us.

EDIT: In @publiclab/reviewers gitter channel, a small discussion regarding bots took place and I guess @Harshithpabbati is exploring bots

[sashadev-sky]

@gauravano can we also explore bot that tells us when no activity has occurred for a week

[grvsachdeva]

Actually, some time ago @siaw23 suggested about https://github.com/probot/stale. How about starting with it?

[sashadev-sky]

@gauravano I'm not sure if it we want it autonomously closing things. For example I am currently working on an issue that @jywarren created 4 years ago. I think would be better if it just let us know?

[sashadev-sky]

welcome bot looks great!

[grvsachdeva]

we can configure probot to just label the old issue/PR as stale or abandoned and not close it https://github.com/probot/stale#usage

[grvsachdeva]

Checking welcome bot features..

[grvsachdeva]

Welcome bot https://github.com/apps/welcome is built with probot :smile: and offers only limited functionality

[sashadev-sky]

@gauravano yeah that sounds good. Maybe we should have a full discussion about all the options we discover and then create a proposal which bots to use and why / how. I can't work on that at the moment but definitely in a few weeks would love to help out!

[grvsachdeva]

Hmm, we can start with probot for now or wait for @Harshithpabbati's research over the bots. As for plots2 probot seems good.

Let's see what @jywarren @siaw23 thinks.

[harshithpabbati]

@gauravano I am trying to configure the sysbot which have many features removing the features which we don't need. But as of now I can't work as I am in my home town. I willl start from tuesday.

[grvsachdeva]

take your time @Harshithpabbati and thanks for working on this one

[jywarren]

The new expandable section is nice - i also tweaked the formatting a bit:

https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/pull/5077#issuecomment-474078660

I think we can expand similar helpful sections in other parts of welcomebot. What about a section linking to a page showing how to go through Travis errors one by one? Or a section showing how to write a test? We can add a lot to this file:

https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/blob/master/.github/config.yml#L14

[jywarren]

ha ha! Nice:

[sashadev-sky]

A little late here but the new welcome bot message looks so good!!

[sashadev-sky]

Going to close this discussion as we implemented the solution!