1019685 - Define contribution pathway for discussion participation

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Webmaker Graveyard :: Metrics, defect)

Description

[Laura Hilliger [:epilepticrabbit]]

There are conversations happening with http://discourse.webmakerprototypes.org that seem like a contribution, so I wanted to file this and see if any one else thought so to.

There are 2 contributor pathways from https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Al0Wg7eR7tHcdGxNNE41RTl4eHBLNG92ZXBHY2l6MkE&usp=sharing#gid=0

that I think may slightly reworded so that they could be fulfilled via Discourse participation:

1. Review and critique a user's make
2. Respond to inquiries on Webmaker listserv

For 1. people are giving each other feedback and discussing their ideas, as well as remixing. In the GDoc it says "via badgekit" but here's proof of this happening in discourse: http://discourse.webmakerprototypes.org/t/the-city-i-live-in-make/252

2. is also happening, lots of staff weighing in (are we counting ourselves, cause then we're about 70 closer!) but community supporting community as well. And we can filter to see: http://discourse.webmakerprototypes.org/t/working-with-regular-folk-adults/340?username_filters=jlweichler

Discourse allows us to see lurkers too, which is pretty interesting...

Comment 1

[Adam Lofting (:adamlofting)]

That's awesome :)

This kind of thing that can't be tracked automatically because it's happening within other 'noise' is where the ad-hoc contribution logger is designed to help out.

Sense check it against the sniff test:
* https://wiki.mozilla.org/Foundation/Metrics/Contributor_Dashboard#Sniff_test

The question I would challenge with in this case is: 
* Are these people *knowingly* contributing to mofo (or in this case webmaker as the mofo project)? Or are they doing it because it's part of the service they are *using* (i.e. they are using our training as a service for their own professional development)

(the fuzzy edge cases like this are the ones that result in the longest conversations - "what is contribution?" is a bit like asking "what is art?"!)

In the end, the judgement call here is down to the teams who are closest to this action. If your team think it's contribution you should log it. 

The other important point is that if these people are going to be badged when they become 'qualified' mentors, they are already being counted (soon) so don't need manually logging.

(In reply to Laura Hilliger [:epilepticrabbit] from comment #0)

> For 1. people are giving each other feedback and discussing their ideas, as
> well as remixing. In the GDoc it says "via badgekit" but here's proof of
> this happening in discourse:
> http://discourse.webmakerprototypes.org/t/the-city-i-live-in-make/252

"via badgekit" meant: when we saw this happening, we would issue a badge, and then we'd use the badge-system as the data source for the dashboard. That will actually be the case soon, but right now you can use the ad-hoc logger instead. 

> 2. is also happening, lots of staff weighing in (are we counting ourselves,
> cause then we're about 70 closer!) but community supporting community as
> well. And we can filter to see:
> http://discourse.webmakerprototypes.org/t/working-with-regular-folk-adults/
> 340?username_filters=jlweichler

We're not counting staff, though in some cases like github usernames this gets harder to unpick automatically.

Comment 2

[[:dajbelshaw] Doug Belshaw]

Given what Adam says here (and a longer conversation we had when I was last in London) I'd say that:

1. This feels like something that's badgeable, as the badge earner would knowingly be in a mentorship role.

2. This *doesn't* feel like something that's badgeable, as it would kind of commodify the organic interaction that takes place on the listserv.

We should definitely continue to think about and iterate on our badge offerings, so thanks for this Laura!

Comment 3

[Adam Lofting (:adamlofting)]

(In reply to [:dajbelshaw] Doug Belshaw from comment #2)
> 2. This *doesn't* feel like something that's badgeable, as it would kind of
> commodify the organic interaction that takes place on the listserv.

This is just an idea... but is there some kind of badge that would recognize this activity without being too specific? Like a 'Webmaker of the Week' badge or 'Star Webmaker' or something better you can think of... that would have some community value and also capture some of this harder to quantify engagement.

Comment 4

[Adam Lofting (:adamlofting)]

I'm not sure there's a next step here for me. Bouncing 'Assignee' to Doug, otherwise we can close this ticket until we're ready to think about this again.

Comment 5

[[:dajbelshaw] Doug Belshaw]

We've got MVP contribution badges - see http://blog.webmaker.org/badges which we can issue on an ad-hoc basis. So I suggest we close this for now.