Point of contact for each lesson

[chendaniely]

The vast majority of our maintainers only maintain a single lesson (there are counts across swc, dc, and lc). There are 161 maintainers across 54 lessons.

Repos per Maintainer	Number of Maintainers
1	129
2	25
3	6
4	1

          0        20        40        60        80        100       120
   M    +-+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
   a    |                                                                       |
   i  1 + =================================================================     +
   n    |                                                                       |
   t  2 + ============-                                                         +
   a    |                                                                       |
   i  3 + ===                                                                   +
   n    |                                                                       |
   e  4 + -                                                                     +
   r    |                                                                       |
   s    +-+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
          0        20        40        60        80        100       120

                                       Repositories

rotated by Trevor Keller to utilize better x- than y-resolution *code for plots can be found here: https://github.com/chendaniely/maintainers

Library Carpentry flags a "lead maintainer" in their lessons, and this seems like a great idea to implement Carpentries-wide if we need a way to get a broad set of feedback from maintainers. We do not want it to seem and do not want it to be a role where there is going to be a lot more work involved.

Examples of things the "lead maintainer" would be responsible for:

• Comments on RFCs
• Adding feedback to the upcomming lesson templates

I would also add that we can make the comments and feedback something as simple as "use this emoji to vote for/against", and maybe use different langauge to iterate that we are not dumping more work for the "lead" (an example phrase could be "point person").

[sstevens2]

Seems like a good idea. Might be good for this person to also coordinate with the other maintainers on the lesson. For example, assigning issues/PRs to other maintainers in the group or helping to facilitate a meeting about goals. For the docker incubator lesson, I've planned a meeting with all the maintainers to discuss the goals for the lesson in the next year. Might be a good action for the Lead Maintainer. I know we don't want to make it a lot more work but I'm feeling like that might not be asking too much (as long as you aren't lead maintainer on many lessons).

[annajiat]

Pros:

• the idea of having a point of contact / lead maintainer is good as it is more scalable and sustainable.
• it might be helpful for meetings or beta programs.

Cons: We might wish to ping all maintainers for comments and feedback:

• We do not know how many responses we are going to receive. Lead maintainer might have missed to provide feedback whereas other maintainers might have provided feedback if they were reached out.
• Having more data might lead to us being able to make more informed decisions.