Re: [emacs-humanities] support/training for new contributors (Re: Extending Emacs Bookmarks)

[Karl Fogel]

On 04 Feb 2021, Joe Corneli via Emacs-humanities wrote:
> One of the things I love about the Emacs community is this 
> generous spirit!  As I remarked before 
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-humanities/2020-12/msg00010.html 
> ... such interactions were influential not just in my learning 
> about programming, but also my learning and thinking about peer 
> learning. 

Aw, that's great to hear.  I enjoyed the earlier post too (I just 
reread it now, but had also read it when you first posted it).

> The upshot is: I wonder if it would be good to create another 
> mailing list (or some other venue) for discussions between new 
> contributors and mentors. 

Actually, I think it's better to have those discussions on the 
existing forums.  The onboarding of new participants is a 
community activity, best done in the usual community forums as a 
normal part of the project's activities, IMHO, and not separated 
off into a special area separate from everything else.

> > (There might be a one-time step in which you need to submit 
> > some  paperwork to the Free Software Foundation, for copyright 
> > assignment, but that would only be true for this first 
> > substantive  commit -- thereafter, you would be on file.) 
> Despite what I said above, and having been using Emacs for quite 
> a long time now, I’m *not sure* if I ever managed to get my 
> signatures sent over, or, if so, any code into Emacs!  So, I’d be 
> interested in a "new contributors" discussion both as a mentor 
> and as a new contributor... 

Oh, the paperwork isn't anything major, it's just a small one-time 
bureaucratic step that's only needed the first time one's changes 
start shipping as part of Emacs.  So if you're ever writing 
changes that look like they're going to land in the main tree, 
then we'll just take care of that paperwork then.  (It doesn't 
seem to have happened yet -- your name doesn't appear in the git 
logs, at any rate.)

Do you want to try the change that Oliver and I were discussing? 
I was going to write it, but if you'd like to have a go, then my 
offer to him can be transferred to you!

Best regards,
-Karl