Forums : Suggestions for Ohloh 2.0

I think that adding more types of contributors would be very logical. Right now we have Commiters and Other Contributors while open source project is based on a large base of developers, testers, documentation writers and extensions developers (themes, plugins.etc) who do not necessarily have commit access. I seems feasible to extend the contribution types supported to include some of those roles.

Your thoughts?

Cheers

dmondark over 17 years ago

Hi dmondark,

I agree.

We're currently working on a web interface update that does away with contributor categories completely. All contributors will be merged into a single list of people. If we have source control metrics for a contributor, we'll display them, but otherwise people are free to describe their contribution as they see fit.

Going forward, Ohloh will cover more than just source control. We could conceivably track bug databases, mailing lists, and other sources, and in some sense there should be a single concept of a contributor no matter how that person contributes.

Robin

Robin Luckey over 17 years ago

It's a great idea.

Along with this idea we've long wanted to track more metrics beyond source code contributions (bug lists, mailing lists, documentation, graphics/art, etc...). With our limited development resources, however, we've had to postpone this for now.

Out of curiosity, however, I'd like to know your opinion on what would you expect the classification of other contributors to be? I suspect it should include:

• Testers
• Documentation/Technical Writing
• Patch Contributor
• Graphics Designer

Anything else?

Would this list be specific or just let people type whatever they want?

Jason Allen over 17 years ago

@Robin
That's great! And I think the idea of tracking more sources is awesome and may seem even necessary at some point not far from now.

@Jason
Now that I read Robin's comment that Ohlo will have all the contributers in one list, there is still opportunity to classify contribution. I am somehow against giving the liberty to type the contribution type, instead it maybe possible to implement a drop down holding the list that you suggested along with a couple of other categories (complete suggested list below). Of course the contributor would still have a text area field to explain his contribution to the particular project. I have added a couple of categories which I think it would be helpful to have, you can see that I added the Other categories because there will always be a type of contribution that we will not cover :)

• Commiter
• Testers
• Documentation/Technical Writing
• Patch Contributor
• Graphics Designer
• Extensions Developer
• Evangelist
• Other

Thanks guys for your responses and suggestions!
Cheers

dmondark over 17 years ago

• Documentation/Software Translation
• User Support

Enderson Maia over 17 years ago