User talk:Mchua/Braindumps/Volunteers portal

A lot of this looks really good. I don't know how much of this will be cleanly implementable, but the introductory mentor idea sounds like it would be really helpful. I'm less sure of the proposed project setup, although having official authentication of projects does enforce quality control. Is the 6 week trial period just to convince people that your project is worthwhile? If so, why an entire 6 weeks? --Nikki 01:17, 28 July 2007 (EDT)

6 weeks is to convince people that your project is going to move forward and last and be completed and actively worked on more than it is to make sure the idea is worthwhile - it's easy to come up with a great idea but hard to follow through with it. And since the trial projects get all the same resources (hosting space, lists, whatever) as an active project (they're just not listed as active projects), it's not like we're denying them anything they need. Plus it means people have enough time to get something really spectacular up and running before their project is announced, so the new projects announcement has a high signal to noise ratio (SNR) and can point to already-working stuff... because new contributors are more likely to join a project that's actually got something going than one that's just got a vague idea, you know? Although I will concede 6 weeks is long. Maybe we can do 4. Mchua 12:00, 28 July 2007 (EDT)

Feedback

Introduction

So far so good. We should check in with someone from the main team in terms of summarizing, for consistency.

Sign-up

We need to get together a list of communities, which may or may not end up being painful. This will probably take a long time.

Personal contact/mentorship

• Create a place for current users to sign up for this
• Maybe a way for people to sign up for new users and receive reminders? (like, "it's been 1 week since User:XYZ has joined, have you checked up on them recently?")

Tiny Tasks

Implementing the tracking system may or may not be hard, depending on who does it. I don't know much about incorporating this sort of thing into the wiki (I've seen that it can be done, I'd love to learn how, but I'm on the 'before' end and not the 'after'). Also, this sounds organization heavy. Finding ongoing tasks to jump start the database will take a while, although it should go quickly if current wiki users are notified and encouraged to add in their tasks/projects.

Contribution Communities

A really fun part; building up a bunch of communities to the point of being able to take in newbies, train them some, and get them going. Should tie in closely with the problems under Sign-up.

Starting your own project

Shouldn't be that hard once we agree on a system (where new projects should go, for example) and find people to regularly review projects. Coding end might be a little tricky for me, but this has already been implemented with the SoCon setup.

Translation guide

This is a good idea. If people use it, this will be a great resource.

--Nikki 14:32, 3 August 2007 (EDT)