search

book / CPANio

CPAN.io
http://cpan.io/
7 stars 6 forks source link

Encourage x_contributors #7

Open szabgab opened 10 years ago

szabgab commented 10 years ago

There is a field called x_contributors in the META files that is supposed to list all the contributors of a module http://perlmaven.com/how-to-add-list-of-contributors-to-the-cpan-meta-files I think it is not used by a lot of people but by creating a metric of "number of modules where user N is listed in the x_contributors field (and even linking to the modules?) could help promoting the field and getting more people to actually contribute to modules. Even when they are not the maintainers.

neilb commented 10 years ago

Yeah, a contributors table is a good idea.

book commented 9 years ago

What are the differents ways an author can contribute to a distribution (from a PAUSE/CPAN point of view)?

I count three:

I would assume that each group contains the next one (an author is also a maintainer and a contributor, and a maintainer is also a contributor).

So we could have three boards, with a prominent explanation of what it means to be a contributor.

neilb commented 9 years ago

we could also consider the following to be "contribution"

szabgab commented 9 years ago
book commented 9 years ago

I was of course considering things that can actually be measured.

Submitting bugs (both RT tickets and github issues) can be measured I guess, provided we have a mapping for email address/CPAN authors (that's actually also required for x_contributors). I guess that role could be named "reporter".

The main difference with the first three I mentionned, is that "reporting" happens outside the control of distribution authors (x_contributors being a META field).

book commented 9 years ago

Another comment about "contributor" is that it can go away (if one's name is removed from the field during a later release). So, for the sake of correctness, I would look at all releases of all distributions.

szabgab commented 9 years ago

I envisioned the x_contributor as a field that lists anyone who contributed at any given time to the project. Regardless of the amount and 'recentness' of contribution.

book commented 9 years ago

@szabgab yes, absolutely. I'm just saying that because the field can be updated (added to and deleted from) with every release of a distribution, it's possible that for some reason someone is removed.

We can decide to either trust the latest version always, or keep track of everyone ever listed in a distribution's x_contributor, no matter what the latest version says.

karenetheridge commented 9 years ago

I would just look at the most recent release. Generally we presume that if something was removed from a dist, it is supposed to no longer be in effect.