Thanks for opening this ticket @ankursinha , I was working on finding some ideas on identifying the problems which newcomers face within FOSS.

Here are some of the things i found:

• The major issue Is to Give Permission
  • Socially
  • Technical
• Not finding something interesting to work on.

Some General Action Items that we can derive is:

• Rather than pointing new comers to different apps or easyfix, we can share a issue of the good first issue marked issue with them and keep track of their progress ourselves. (It makes them feel they're allowed).
• Have bi-monthly On-boarding call and invite new comers to get on boarded talk to them via Call and point them to their good first issues.

I'm not sure if these issues are real and faced by inactive fedora newcomers, How about sending them an email and asking them about their experience ?

We can tag issues with the hacktoberfest title. People might just surge in some 18 days from now. :wink: Check more about it here. https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/.

Albeit we got to note the fact that their contributions might be temporary (like only for the period of October - let's say) but once they start joining us from October - we can interact with them to make sure that their stay is pleasing and their will to contribute keeps rising.

This is the Actual situtation of the Welcome! tickets:

Number of newcomers in queue: 44
Number of ticket closed: 33

• Number of successful newcomers: 11, which Included.
  "S: I am Fedora"
  "C: Temporary membership approved"
• Number of unresponsive newcomers: 23, whcih included.
  "S: User unresponsive"
  "C: Progress check 3 - Final"

Also:

Number of give up: 1
Number of temporary membership: 7

Regards.,

How about having mentorships,

A team invested in guiding new contributors, through a two month or three months contribution period.

I think one of the reasons new contributors do not stay for long is because Sometimes finding good first issues to work on can be quite stressful, especially for non technical contributors. So if they can be guided in other areas where they can contribute non-technical skills to, contributors would stay more.

Get them involved in community events or organization.

If contributors are made to feel more like members of the community rather than just contributors, they would stay more.

Hey @nienie , thanks for the comments.

The idea of the Welcome-to-Fedora system is just that, for some dedicated community members to help newcomers get started by helping them integrate in the community first, rather than on tasks (i.e. get to know the people first and then slowly take on tasks of interest). I see that you have a ticket filed there too---could you expand on what you mean, if not this?

This is the Actual situtation of the Welcome! tickets:

Number of newcomers in queue: 44 Number of ticket closed: 33

• Number of successful newcomers: 11, which Included.
  "S: I am Fedora"
  "C: Temporary membership approved"
• Number of unresponsive newcomers: 23, whcih included.
  "S: User unresponsive"
  "C: Progress check 3 - Final"

Also:

Number of give up: 1
Number of temporary membership: 7

Regards.,

Thanks @hhlp . I'd missed this notification. A 25% success rate is not bad at all. It certainly feels lower than what we had before we put this system in place.

One to one mentorship is difficult. People is busy (in the community and in the life). There are timezone differences, differend work hours.
In addition mentorship is difficult if newcomers doesn't take action in first person. The Fedora project is not a job employer, where we assign tasks to people. We don't want curriculum vitae. It is up to people to find something they are happy to follow and perform. We can answer to every question, and we are happy to do so, in the welcome ticket and in the communication channels. But as far as I can see, what is lacking is such interaction.

Yeh, one-to-one mentorship is certainly very difficult. It's been tried before and didn't last---volunteer driven communities tend to work with people mostly self-learning what they are interested in.

Similar to what @nasirhm has suggested above, but more general: we could perhaps think of having a regular Fedora Join meetings in different time zones (maybe one meeting a month in 3 different time zones depending on where volunteers are based/available?) and encourage newcomers to join us there and ask questions etc.?

(I don't want to start on-boarding calls, since they focus on tasks rather than people, so I'd prefer general catchups where folks can ask whatever they wish and we can direct them to different teams' onboarding docs if required)

Similar to what @nasirhm has suggested above, but more general: we could perhaps think of having a regular Fedora Join meetings in different time zones (maybe one meeting a month in 3 different time zones depending on where volunteers are based/available?) and encourage newcomers to join us there and ask questions etc.?

Yep, like an AMA session for newcomers and people that could be interested in joining the community.

(I don't want to start on-boarding calls, since they focus on tasks rather than people, so I'd prefer general catchups where folks can ask whatever they wish and we can direct them to different teams' onboarding docs if required)

Agree.

Filed https://pagure.io/fedora-join/Fedora-Join/issue/241 for the specific AMA discussion

I personally feel like this is all a bit much. I just signed up and the first thing I get is .. you need to do this, then that, then this .. way to much. It may be that you are making it complicated? I am not trying to be negative but that is my first impression after signing up an hour ago. People are here for different reasons, some may want to make friends, some are techies (like myself) who would like to test daily's or the latest beta. Some may want to figure out how to report bugs. Others may want to contribute to the news letter. I tried to follow a few of the links, unfortunately I was not able to log into them. I know you want to help but possibly have a questionnaire on sign up? What there interested in with contributions. There level of tech savviness? Is that even a word? To attempt to land them on a more appropriate page. I see the last comment was 2 years ago .. I must type slow!

Hi @hardrive : could you please be more specific? What were you required to do, and where? Is this in reference to the "welcome to Fedora" process, or something else? What links did you try to use, and which did not work?

We don't have a questionnaire, we have the "welcome to Fedora" process instead. It's a lot less formal, and it provides folks with information and lets then go through it at their own pace (I don't see a "Welcome to Fedora" ticket for you).

https://pagure.io/fedora-join/Welcome-to-Fedora

Finally---tickets not having responses in a while doesn't mean much in volunteer communities, especially in repositories that are related to teams rather than software. There are lots that we just keep around so folks, like you, can come and drop a comment. it does not mean that the team is no longer active.

As this ticket is still open...
What are our current 'I am Fedora' statistics.

I have lot of experience in this area (volunteer recruitment) and 25% is pretty par for course if not good.

We'll have to go over the tickets to collect data. We lost the previous
repo though and had to restart the repo, so not a lot of data is currently
available. I'd be very surprised if we retain 25% of people, though.

--
Thanks,

Ankur

(Sent from mobile device)

On Fri, 7 Feb 2025, 16:17 Mat H, pagure@pagure.io wrote:

theprogram added a new comment to an issue you are following:
``
As this ticket is still open...
What are our current 'I am Fedora' statistics.

I have lot of experience in this area (volunteer recruitment) and 25% is
pretty par for course if not good.
``

To reply, visit the link below or just reply to this email
https://pagure.io/fedora-join/Fedora-Join/issue/219