Talk: Suggest improvements for GNU Generation

Make Reports Weekly or Bi-Weekly

Currently, GNU Generation has bi-monthly reports. This creates an environment where participants feel as if they need to have done something "worth two months" to report in and discourages people from coming in and getting rewarded with feedback.

Instead, GNU Generation should take a page from the Xtreme Programming book, and have progress reports several times a week. For best results, these should be on a mailing list, so that participants get feedback on what others are doing and can offer advice or assistance if necessary. With reports happening multiple times a week, new participants could immediately do something to signify themselves as "part of the community" or as "working on GNU Generation stuff," and all participants will have more reason to report in, because there won't be any expectation for them to have done something "big."

This is the system a few groups I've worked with in the past have used, and it's proven very effective.

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I couldn't agree more with you. I have felt discouraged at least one time when submitting a progress report because I haven't done anything "big" and I didn't think reporting "I filled some bugs on X, W and Y projects and did some patches for them." was worth it. The reports should be on a shorter timespan, and should be public, so members can see what others are doing and discover new projects, help with them, and get new ideas. --Turl 00:21, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

While I'm not sure if the extra work with more progress reports is necessarily worth it, I never mentioned bug triaging/patching (most of my time spent related to the development of free software) in my progress reports for this same reason. Daradib 02:44, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Member of the month

I like the idea of small updates about what everyone is doing instead of focusing on a member of the month. It's more welcoming for new members to see that even simple and straightforward tasks count. If members do especially noteworthy tasks, they could still be recognized as member(s) of the month or something similar. If members are willing to make their reports public (perhaps the option to post progress reports to a dedicated list or -discuss), we could exchange ideas and give comments/advice. Daradib 02:53, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Mentors

I'd suggest we have some people who are too old to be gnu generation basically come in and teach whatever. Basically actually have them help make us better at what we're trying to do :P