Recognizing and identifying contributors: Community Hub

[brampitoyo]

Current situation

We’re going to have more than one communities within Marketplace.

Currently, we have two community groups:

1. Those who review app submissions
2. Those who curates app to be featured by the Editorial Team

The contribution ideas we’re thinking of will create four more community groups:

1. Those who translate app descriptions
2. Those who give feedbacks and flag + moderate misplaced user reviews
3. Those who submit screenshots
4. Those who write reviews

   Some activities are inherently in need of community-based feedback

For our current two communities, it seems that having a place where community members can communicate with each other and us would be important. To my understanding, the Review Team and the Editorial Team have coordinated using email or Google Groups. So there’s already a place for them. Good.

For our proposed activities, translating app descriptions seems to require some amount of coordination. Posting translations on the contributors forum would minimise overlaps (so other contributors won’t double up work) and generate better translation quality.

Identifying troublesome apps and moderating misplaced user reviews also seem like it could benefit from having feedbacks from other contributors. We don’t necessarily want to encourage 10 contributors to submit 10 similar feedbacks about an app. We’d much rather have 1 feedback about an app that clearly describes everything that’s wrong about an app and what to do about it. That way, our community feedback is coordinated and of higher quality.

For these activities, having a one-stop shop that can service community managers and individual contributors is important.

Some activities aren’t necessarily in need of a community forum

Submitting screenshots and writing reviews are activities that can be done without much feedbacks from fellow contributors. A great review is born out of personality rather than community deliberation, and a good screenshot is relatively easy to take and upload. In this case, a forum isn’t necessary.

Introducing the Marketplace Community Hub

I propose creating a space where:

1. Contributors from each area are identified. This is similar to the Reviewer Tools leaderboard. We would like to know who helps out the curation in each region. We would like to know who have written a lot of translations. Who have submitted a lot of app feedbacks and helped moderate misplaced user reviews. Who have submitted a lot of screenshots and written a lot of reviews.
2. Contributors can discuss findings and issues within their areas with, coordinate with, and get feedback from other contributors. Note: some tasks are personal and/or easy to perform, so feedback isn’t necessary.
3. Mozilla can relay community-related news. This includes notes from our public meetings. But this may also include product-related news: new features, new policies, etc.

The hub doesn’t necessarily have to take the form of a separate website. It can be a Google Group. It can be a dashboard within each contributor’s Profile section. But it does need to perform all the functions above, so it can help contributors succeed.

I recognise that this hub may not be necessary when we just launched the program and the number of contributors are still few. However, it’s still worth thinking about.

[brampitoyo]

Community Hub helps contributors write better app translations

Other contributors can give feedback on translation and help improve it.

Community Hub helps contributors submit better app feedbacks

Other contributors can help spot more problems with an app, and help write a more detailed feedback for developers.

Community Hub helps Mozilla’s Editorial Team curate local apps

Scott already does this today, via email/Google Groups.

[brampitoyo]

Ping @pwalm and @mhanratty for feedback.