[OH-Dev] A visual flowchart for Open Source Comes to Campus (or: a thread *not* about a big ball of code)

[Karen Rustad]

I'm interested in doing this. I'm especially excited about making a print
version too! Right now, I'm in Washington DC attending DjangoCon and doing
other work, so I won't be able to get to work on it right away, but I
hopefully will be able to do something after I get back on Saturday.

If you don't hear anything on or before Monday, consider the cookie
un-licked.*

*http://communitymgt.wikia.com/wiki/Cookie_Licking

-- Karen

On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 6:57 PM, Asheesh Laroia <asheesh at asheesh.org> wrote:

> Hey all develers,
>
> In preparing for the upcoming open source comes to campus, I made a visual
> flow chart of the steps it takes to get a patch accepted into an open
> source project. The flow chart is only on paper at the moment, and it'd be
> cool to make it some HTML-y thing. Any takers? (:
>
> This could be a quick hack for someone who likes HTML, CSS, and/or
> JavaScript. (Usually, things on OH-Dev can't be quick hacks because of code
> review, and because changes have to integrate with the existing big ball of
> code that is oh-mainline. But I figure since this coding request is for
> something OpenHatchy, posting it here is on-topic!)
>
> (CC:ing afarrell and ezyang, who expressed interest in this when I
> mentioned it to them off-list)
>
> == More ==
>
> The way contributing to open source works is that it's a collection of
> steps that I, personally, have totally internalized. I've internalized not
> only the sequence of steps, but detailed information about each step.
>
> For Open Source Comes to Campus, when we ask students to get involved in
> projects, we end up with a lot of blank stares. So, to help people work
> through making their first contribution, I think a flow chart would help
> students articulate what step they're on, especially so they can ask for
> help with that step. (This is corroborated by the one time I used this in
> person with someone, who liked it enough to take a photo of it on her
> iPhone for future reference.)
>
> (Also, these steps are very similar for any sort of weakly-organized
> collaborative project.)
>
> So I imagine that there could be some web page students can work through,
> where there are a set of circles with the step names, and when you click on
> the step name, you see more details about that step.
>
> The "flow chart" could look something like this (scanned from something I
> tested out on someone, in person, last week):
>
> * Flow chart link: http://web.mit.edu/asheesh/**www/flowchart-scan.jpg<http://web.mit.edu/asheesh/www/flowchart-scan.jpg>
>
> I wrote out paragraph-y descriptions for each step, which is what you'd
> see when you click on the nodes, here:
>
> * Steps and descriptions: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/**process<https://etherpad.mozilla.org/process>
>
> I happened to write in YAML syntax because, in some amazing future, the
> visual web page we're describing could be driven by a YAML input file (or a
> database, I suppose).
>
> == Help requested ==
>
> It takes me ages to lay anything out visually in JS/CSS/HTML, so I'm
> wondering if someone else wants to try their hand at it!
>
> The first time I expect to try using it is at the Sat Sep 15 Open Source
> Comes to Campus event at JHU.
>
> P.S. I think this would actually work really well as a printed handout,
> too, if someone wants to go that route. But the web is just so hip.
> Besides, I think this flow chart could possibly become the most useful
> thing on the OpenHatch website if we make it for the web.
>
> -- Asheesh.
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> Devel mailing list
> Devel at lists.openhatch.org
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>
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