Mechanism to keep contributors list up to date

[erget]

We need to keep the contributors list up to date. Some ideas floating around have been

• update CONTRIBUTING.md to have authors or moderators open a new PR for the website when closing a discussion
• add a step to the release procedures where we review PRs and update the list

Might be a better way to do this that's not encompassed in what's above.

People who've already expressed interest: @JonathanGregory @davidhassell @ethanrd @taylor13

Hi @JonathanGregory I've merged this as agreed, but I'd prefer not to leave this issue open indefinitely - seems like a good way for it to get orphaned. The wider question is how we keep the list up-to-date, and for that I think we need to update either the contribution guidelines or the release procedures. Open to discussion on that front and will open a separate issue.

Originally posted by @erget in #227 (comment)

[JonathanGregory]

Thanks for merging the update and for opening this issue, Daniel @erget.

In order to make it a bit easier for moderators, perhaps we could ask them in CONTRIBUTING.md to email the chair and secretary of the conventions committee with the names of participants who contributed substantially. That would be easier than opening a PR. Then it would be the responsibility of those officers to compile a list for use in updating the web page annually as part of the release procedure. I think it's necessary to have some moderation to make sure we're consistent in the approach, and also to include names from any discussions which concluded without agreement, as Karl @taylor13 reminded us.

Happy Friday

Jonathan

[erget]

Hi @JonathanGregory , I'm not opposed to the approach in general, but would prefer to keep the communications on GitHub rather than via email to the 2 officers. What do you think of asking the moderator to tag them when a discussion concludes? In that case both would get an email (unless they've turned off those types of notifications) and the discussion would all take place on the same platform.

[JonathanGregory]

Perhaps even simpler than that would be for the moderator to mention significant contributors to the successful conclusion of the discussion when they wind up the issue.

[erget]

True... Under the assumption that that gets caught by another process that sweeps up the concluded issues. Could be a period review of all the closed issues, for example, but something would need to happen to pick up the mentions.

[JonathanGregory]

Yes, that's right, but I think we have to sweep the issues anyway in order to catch the ones which were closed inconclusively.

[erget]

Ok. So that means we'd need 2 updates, both in the Conventions repo:

1. CONTRIBUTING.md gets updated to request that moderators propose users who've contributed substantially to the discussion at hand (and aren't already in the contributors list) when concluding discussions
2. The as-yet hypothetical RELEASE.md includes a check of the issues that have been closed since the last release to find contributors to add to the website repo

Correct?

[JonathanGregory]

Yes, that looks right to me. I think it would work. Thanks.

[erget]

Please check the PR associated with this issue - I think that solves it, but needs to be merged along with the procedural update referenced in the commit.

[taylor13]

Just to register my support for the proposed approach negotiated between @erget and @JonathanGregory .

[erget]

Thanks @taylor13 @JonathanGregory .

Slight correction: I've moved all changes onto the original PR that spawned this discussion: cf-convention/cf-conventions#372 (on release procedure). That has changes both to RELEASE.md and CONTRIBUTING.md.

[JonathanGregory]

That looks fine. Thanks very much, @erget. J

[davidhassell]

I'm also happy with the solution on the table - thanks, all.

[erget]

Ok, I'm closing this issue then because the changes are all in cf-convention/cf-conventions#372; I'll note they've been agreed in that discussion.

[ethanrd]

Sorry I missed this discussion. I was out for a long weekend.

I still prefer the option of having moderators create a PR to capture the additions to the contributor list. It seems less prone to error or missing an addition altogether. And, while an additional step, it is a pretty straight forward step that can easily be done through the GitHub web interface, through the edit page for the contributor list file.

On the other hand, I'm don't feel that strongly about it. So, I'm good with the above agreed plan.

[taylor13]

Sad to say, I have not yet learned how to create a PR. There might be other fuddy duddy potential moderators in the same boat, who might decline to moderate a discussion to avoid having to learn how to create a PR. So thanks for not feeling "strongly about it".