Create Open Collective Community Guide

[gusaus]

We need to create a guide that can serve as an easy entry point for Open Collective community contributors. It should contain the following info -

• [ ] Community Structure and Governance model https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/20
• [ ] How to get involved https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/21
• [ ] Paying contributors https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/19
• [ ] Becoming a Community Partner
• [ ] Recognizing contributors, sponsors, and partners
• [ ] Contributor roles https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/23
• [ ] Contributing financially
  • [ ] Bounty Program https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/22
  • [ ] RFP process for feature development https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/4

[Anita-ihuman]

I have started developing a draft for this task here. @gusaus

While this is still a rough sketch, I would appreciate possible inputs as we progress.

[gusaus]

@Anita-ihuman Thank you so much for taking the time to do this! As we've been discussing in Slack, I realized our entire group was a bit confused how Community Contributor Group is intended to enable paid contributions to Open Collective community (including priority projects on https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/10). It is not intended to be the collective that governs and sustains the Open Collective community.

In an attempt to clarify (in the draft) I went ahead a made a lazy first pass at find/replace and a few other edits to decouple Community Contributor Group (and the collective) from what we're trying to enable (Open Collective Community).

I think we can use this major step forward to establish some collaborative workflows for working together as a team while giving us a reason to enable and collaborate with a working group/team https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/9 in #documentation.

[gusaus]

@Anita-ihuman You'll see a few suggestions of mine in your draft. Mainly revolving around removing details about any specific working group (including https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/10) and working them out in the (newly renamed Open Collective Community - Working Groups) Google doc.

There are some other quick fixes I'd like to make to your draft but I no longer have the ability to edit the doc after changing the permissions so 'anyone with the link can comment (not edit)'. And I forget how to request for that permission.

[Anita-ihuman]

@gusaus I will invite you to have access to the document

[gusaus]

@Anita-ihuman I spent some time restructuring and shuffling things around. Also started to a few more Open Collective specific elements to the outline and renamed the document to 'Open Collective: Community Handbook' (which is a more accurate describer).

That said, I think we need to do the following before we work on this more.

• [ ] Get feedback from @Victorybrown @ShaneCurcuru @schalkneethling (and you!) about the structure and general intent/goals of this guide. Does it make sense? Will it serve an unmet need? Will it be valuable for Open Collective community members? I'm not sure the best way to go about that. Should we comment and make suggestions on the google draft?
• [ ] Draft a proposal as if we were representing Open Collective and participating in Google Season of Docs. Reasons for that suggestion are 1) Open Collective participated in 2019.; 2) Google uses Open Collective to pay participating organizations and technical writers.; 3) Even if Open Collective is not participating this year, the idea of the community helping run a similar DIY/homegrown program was seeded (and warmly received) back when Open Collective participated. While lack of (Open Collective team) capacity has prevented the effort from moving forward, the community (which includes the Sustain Docs WG and #documentation channel) has grown to a point where we can make it a project of the Documentation working group we'll be enabling during GitHub's Maintainer Month!

Will just stop there until there's feedback and followup questions from the group and other interested folks.

[Anita-ihuman]

Thanks @gusaus for the first point, I think we might need to have a general call on of these days to communicate effectively.Slack is great but having a call once in a while would also help us as a team.

On the second point, I think it would be great to participate in GSOD this year as well. But then which of the tasks are we going to be focusing on for this proposal?

[gusaus]

I think it would be great to participate in GSOD this year as well.

GSOD is already happening but I was proposing we (the Open Collective community) run something 'like' GSOD by using/extending the tools and processes they provide.

It doesn't need to be that formal (at least in the short term) - we could

• work with the Open Collective team to provide/extend bounties for documentation tasks https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/22 (as previously discussed in the #documentation channel)
• say that x amount of recurring sponsorship (into a TBD collective) will get x amount of these types of priority tasks
• create a project proposal using the existing template in the Open Collective GitHub repo

One reason I suggested using GSOD as a guide is there's an existing template we could use and also incorporate into our own process/template https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/4

All we're really doing is repurposing templates and processes that already exist. We need a few more skilled/available people to pm and write clear/effective proposals.

Who do we know?

[gusaus]

which of the tasks are we going to be focusing on for this proposal?

Whatever is listed as a priority for the Documentation Working Group https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/9

[gusaus]

@Anita-ihuman Considering we're setting the stage for a collaboration with The Good Docs Project to move forward (see this Canvas in Open Collective Slack to track recent progress), I think we could the formation of a DEI working group https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/issues/2#issuecomment-1775902130 could create the need/opportunity to document a process/template for creating a working group and Slack channel (as part of 'this' project).

Does that make sense?

[Anita-ihuman]

Yes it does. So Far, I doubt we have a clear process of how a WG can be initiated but the commencement of this one, would be a great example to document and use for others.

[gusaus]

I actually tried to use the Sustain Working groups as a model https://sustainoss.org/working-groups/

Not sure if a template was used to create them, but they seem to have a similar format.

Could be inspiration for creating a Working Group issue template? https://github.com/communitycontributorgroup/opencollective/tree/main/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE