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Hey folks. I'd made the below ticket for the Council to look over at their F2F and they've asked me to create it over here instead. Thank you :)
Looking at the current process here: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-join/welcome/welcome/
I had some thoughts on ways to improve the onboarding experience and I have outlined them below. I've sanity checked this with some community members who liked it and encouraged me to submit this ticket ahead of the upcoming F2F as it may be a useful topic of discussion.
The person looking to join makes a ticket/reaches out to a dedicated medium. This ticket/channel asks for their timezone, and based on this, a community member is assigned to be their onboarding buddy. The buddy answers the ticket, and between them they pick a time that works best for both parties to join a real time communication medium of their choice. A 2hr timeslot should be sufficient. (Jitsi, Matrix, etc). They can work through the vital onboarding pieces together, such as making a Fedora contributor account, welcome to Fedora intro ticket and showcasing the type of SIGs available to join and adding them to required chatrooms/tools. Once a SIG(s) have been picked, the buddy can update their ticket with any necessary requests for certain FAS User Groups. The new member can ask questions on their ticket and the buddy will answer them. (no limit). This buddy is responsible for checking in with the person each week for a total of 4 weeks to see if there is anything else they need. (45min slot for this, picked by both parties). If no replies in 4 weeks, or if the new member confirms they are up and running, this initial intro ticket is closed. Ticket transitions from “Intro” to “Retention”. Buddy checks in with the new person on the retention ticket once per month for 5 months, and/or responds to any questions posted there by the new member. 6 months from start to finish, the person is considered successfully onboarded. Admin notes:
Total dedicated time per buddy per new person is 5hrs over the first 4 weeks, and approx 10hrs in total over 6 months. Rotation of buddies per timezone can be set up after seeking volunteers. Badges to incentivise buddies; 1, 3, 5, 10, 25, 50 & 100 Contributors Onboarded. Potential priority for highly contributing buddies to be funded part or in full for community in person events. An example of a ticket from the current process, that at least on public appearance, appears to be stalled/inactive can be found here: https://pagure.io/fedora-join/WelcomeToFedora/issue/44
Hi @ancarrol
We've been discussing this on the discussion thread already: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/fedora-council-tickets-ticket-524-onboarding-and-retention/144039/3
I'm pasting my reply here too to begin with:
The buddy system would be great to have, but it has just never happened. We’ve never managed to have any sort of mentoring in Fedora where newcomers are connected to existing contributors who then actively “look after” them. We seem to always lack the human resources to do so. I’d be jubilant if someone wants to try this again—it’ll really help with onboarding.
The ticket system is meant to help with this—all newcomers + join sig members get notifications from these welcome to Fedora tickets. So, the idea is not to have one single point of contact (or failure), but instead let “everyone talk to everyone”. We respond to tickets, but we do not check on people regularly any more. We’ve done this in the past where one of us has gone through all the tickets and commented on them asking how people are doing and so on. That’s what the “status check” flags are for. (I don’t have data on this, but it didn’t seem like this increased participation significantly. In some cases, it felt like we were pushing people and they’d reply apologising for not being able to volunteer etc., and that didn’t feel quite right). If we have more people to help (human resources are again the bottle neck here), we could start status checks again.
There’s also an idea to start monthly cohort meetings for newcomers, but it needs more people to help:
https://pagure.io/fedora-join/Fedora-Join/issue/291
The particular ticket you have noted did get a response, but on the mailing list:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/fedora-join@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/EJF27YHWQIHXFGLNXWYWX4BCP3M4C2OB/
(not sure why it doesn’t show my reply in the thread directly).
We just forgot to update the ticket. I’ve done that now.
TLDR: the issue isn’t a system/pipeline—it’s the lack of human resources to actively engage with newcomers.
A few updates since this was written:
A few people did join the SIG and have taken up the task of actively responding to tickets, so we're seeing a lot more activity now.
5 hours of time per week doesn't seem like a lot, but given that most Fedora contributors are volunteers also working on lots of other Fedora things (and this is all already in addition to their jobs and personal lives---most of our jobs are not Fedora related), an additional 5 hours is actually quite a lot (I couldn't commit to that myself, even if I'd like to, for example).
Metadata Update from @ankursinha: - Issue tagged with: C: Team, S: Needs-comment, S: WIP, T: Idea
I would invite you to join us on Matrix channel Join Fedora ( chat.fedoraproject.org ) We sort of do have a buddy system, but it is less formal that your proposal.
We may have a talk at Flock, and are coming up with new ideas to help with retention that it would be great if you are part of. ( https://pagure.io/fedora-join/Fedora-Join/issue/302 )
There is more talk about what we could do at https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/organising-monthly-new-contributor-cohorts/107600
I do not think that setting up a one-to-one buddy system in a timezone would work because 1) we don't have enough people to be buddies, 2) buddies would also have to be specialists in the areas people want to work in 3) many newcomers never get back to us after signing up so there would be wasted admin work 4) new people do not yet know about Fedora or where they could fit in.
Instead of a formal one-to-one buddy system, we have an asynchronous group buddy system where we try and help people get into the areas they would like to be in.
Our current workflow is at https://pagure.io/fedora-join/WelcomeToFedora
Please do come and help us out over on Matrix and in Join! We could use your help!
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