GSOD 2020 Project

Hello Everyone. I’m happy I got into GSOD and to work with Django. I will be working with @carltongibson, thank you so much. I’m happy I got accepted and thanks to the body for acceptance.

I will like to know if they were specific challenges anyone had or has with contribution documentation.
@carltongibson I’ll be like know if they are other means to interact with you outside the forum.

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Hi @gabbyprecious! Congratulations :tada: Welcome aboard! :sailboat:

I was going to send you an email to get started but I’ll post it here now. :slight_smile:

First off, I’ll be working with you as well as Mariusz, my fellow Fellow, but very exciting we also have Mikey Ariel on board to help mentor you too.

Mikey is an experienced technical writer, and active member of the Write the Docs community.

Mikey says to join their Slack and say hi. (I’d guess her handle there is @ThatDocsLady — but I’m so bad with tech that I can’t seem to login now, and I’ve tried so many times I’m having to pass a vocal exam to get past the captcha…) Do do this — I think it’s a really good community.

Also though, watch her Docs or it didn’t happen keynote from DjangoCon Europe 2019, which was awesome — and set us on the path to being in Season of Docs now.

We need a kick-off meeting to work out the plan. We can talk about that in the email.

You can always email if you need anything, but it would be nice to work here to the extent we can, so it’s public and others can follow/join in.

I’d say to browse around, get familiar, make sure you can build the docs and so on. If you watch for a few days you’ll see the familiar faces. Every one if friendly. Any help you need, just shout.

Again, welcome aboard — I’m really excited about your project and to be working with you.

Kind regards, Carlton

Thanks for the welcome

I can’t wait to meet Mariusz, I have messaged Mikey on Slack and I’m waiting for her response. I’m also going to watch the video, and I have gotten the Django dev version and I have been going through the documentations.

Looking forward to your email, and learning under you.

Best Regards,
Gabby

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@gabbyprecious BTW, are you on Twitter?

Yes my handle is @pgabbyprecious. I searched for you though. Didn’t see you. :face_with_hand_over_mouth: :upside_down_face:

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I found that the process for a new feature wasn’t entirely clear. The documentation said to propose it on the django-devs email list, but it didn’t get a lot of response there. After opening the ticket to implement it, the discussion occurred. I’m fine with either one. I was hesitant to open the ticket because the documentation wasn’t clear on when that should occur. I also didn’t want to add unnecessary ticket to the backlog for triage. Having more clarity around the milestones for contribution would have been helpful to me.

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:tada: Welcome @gabbyprecious ! :tada:

I’m really excited to see your improvements to the docs.

The contributing docs are definitely a pain point. They’re thorough, and everything is in there, but they’re also a giant mountain for new contributors to wander around and get lost on.

Welcome @gabbyprecious! :wave:

As others have said I’m super excited this activity. I’m a fairly new contributor so I’ll try and note the areas I struggle with, some of which could be helped by docs, some may just my lack of ability :slight_smile:

  • Unsure when to raise a ticket. I’ve fallen for this one on a few occasions and am kindly reminded by folk over at GitHub. Some changes are so small they don’t need a ticket, but many do. It took me far too long to learn this.

  • As an aside, docs and pull requests are in two different places, I’m opening a PR on GitHub but the docs and trac are elsewhere. Would it be helpful to have a GitHub PR template - yes many people will ignore it but could be helpful it kept minimal?

  • Patch review checklist. I’ve seen many comments along the lines of ‘please see the patch review checklist’. For some reason I remember finding it hard to find, but searching for it now found it easily enough. When I did find it I found it hard to translate the docs into ‘what it means for me’ and ‘what am I to do’. I think I’ve probably failed at making sure the release notes are appropriately added along with .. versionchanged: and .. versionadded:: notes in the Django Docs.

  • How and when to approach the mailing list. There is a style on the mailing list that gets attention, but I am yet to work out what it is. Some posts attract a lot of discussion but others do not. Are there any tips which can help folk get a better response. (I suspect my fault is writing too much :grimacing: )

  • Folk need to appreciate the quality of code in Django is high. I am unsure if the docs can help set expectations. This should be supportive, as the community support is there and the reward I find is in thinking deeply about a ticket and solving it. If I’ve missed a few commas or got the tests in the wrong place etc that is of secondary importance to having opined on an issue for some time to solve the issue itself? (:crossed_fingers:)

Good luck with this project!