Collaboration and Contribution Process Review

[bnb]

I briefly reached out to @mcollina about this who suggested I open an issue on the TSC repo:

I'm not sure if we've ever done a full review/reflective pass on our collaboration and contribution documents within the project (for example, the TSC Charter and Working Groups doc,).

It may perhaps be beneficial to collectively take a look at these processes (and any others!) and see both which parts may or may not be reflective of how we currently operate and which parts could be improved to allow us both as a project to work better and for the community to contribute effectively and meaningfully.

[Trott]

I think we're overdue to move whatever is of value in Applications elsewhere and then remove the directory in this repository. We don't have projects applying for membership anymore. They should go to the OpenJS Foundation instead, I would think.

[jasnell]

It's going to be easiest to start with a list of issues that may need to be addressed, otherwise it's going to be way too open ended.

[mcollina]

@bnb would you like to faciltiate this? I think having an approach from outside the folks with Node.js commit access would be very interesting.

[boneskull]

(also collaborators who would contribute more often, if not for the process. 🙂)

[bnb]

@mcollina sure. Is this something you'd want me to do inside of the TSC repo, inside of the Admin repo, or somewhere else?

(I am also OOO this week so may be slow to respond, just wanted to check on this to see if I was blocking at all)

[mcollina]

I think opening issues here is ok.

Having a fresh perspective on https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md and how we could simplify things.

[Trott]

Having a fresh perspective on https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md and how we could simplify things.

Since most of us who are frequent contributors to the project also never look at that file, it's possible there's some pretty low-hanging fruit in there. My immediate suggestions:

• Simplify language everywhere. Be brief, informative, and friendly.
• For issues:
  • Remove "How to Contribute in Issues".
  • Remove "Resolving a Bug Report".
• For pull requests:
  • Remove the preamble that is before the table of contents.
  • Remove the lengthy section on "Reviewing pull requests". It's not that it isn't important; it's just irrelevant to someone wanting to open a pull request, which is who is most likely to be reading this. If we want to keep it, link to it in the collaborators guide rather than having it all laid out here.

[mhdawson]

@bnb are you still planning to move this forward ?

[bnb]

@mhdawson good timing on this question 😅

I'd completely not remembers that I created it nor that I committed to it. After next week I'm planning on pretty aggressively focusing on open-source work for a bit, and I can prioritize this in that time.

[mmarchini]

That's something I've been thinking a lot about lately (especially in the context of https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md), and I'm eager to bounce off ideas with anyone who's also interested in this conversation :D

[mhdawson]

@bnb @mmarchini great to hear :)

[mhdawson]

@bnb, @mmarchini anything to report on this front?