What's your idea?
Add a "Need Maintainers" page on drupal.org. This page would consist of two parts: First part would be written by the drupal core team, and would highlight core components that need maintainers/coordinators; Second part would contain a list of contrib modules that have a "seeking maintainer" status.
What are the benefits?
This would help fill in the gaps, as people join and leave the drupal community. Right now, this information is broadcast through announcements or posts that reach drupal planet, and then go out of sight, and can easily be missed. Directing volunteer developers to contrib modules that need maintainers helps their progress, makes contrib more reliable, and makes a drupal 8 port more likely.
How can we measure the impact of this idea? (metrics)
By counting the number of contrib modules "seeking new/co-maintainers", and their activity (fixing issues, committing code, and new branches).
Who directly benefits from / will use this improvement? (target audiences)
Module developers. Drupal users.
Comments
Neat idea! This is a great
Neat idea! This is a great example of a simple improvement that could make a big impact.
Yes! I have several published
Yes! I have several published modules that I myself don't use anymore, which could desperately need some TLC. But good comaintainers are hard to find. :(
I'm always looking out for
I'm always looking out for projects I'm using that need assistance and that are willing to accept comaintainers.
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Portland Drupal Developer
Highlight maintainer request per module
Usually developers are looking to contribute to modules that they already use. Maybe a better solution would be to highlight the request for a maintainer on module pages or send direct messages to users of the modules that need maintainers.
Counter perposal
I have an idea. Let's make a "Need Maintainers" project on d.o. with issue queue just like webmaster issue queue.
If a module required a new maintainer then module owner or any other user can create an issue "Need Maintainer for x.y.z module" with little explanation why this project needs maintainer and list benefits if any of becoming maintainer. Interested user can reply to issue and we can fix the issue once we have a new maintainer.
Pros:
Everybody using d.o. is familiar with this process.
It is easy to implement we already have projects like this on d.o.
Any user can subscribe to issue queue or just follow twitter account.
It is a simple work flow nothing complicated in it.
Cons:
"Need Maintainers" project needs maintainers :D
Wow, that's actually an
Wow, that's actually an incredibly simple, useful suggestion we could implement right now.
Would you be able to file an issue suggesting it in the "Drupal.org webmasters" queue and cross-link it here?
Done
Create "Need Maintainers" project to find new maintainers for projects :)
There's also taxonomy terms
There's also taxonomy terms for the status already:
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
I had come across these
I had come across these taxonomy term pages before, but they are showing incorrect results sometimes. For example, under the "Seeking new maintainer" term, on page 3, there are projects with "Minimally maintained", or even "Actively maintained" status listed!
Maybe we should file a bug somewhere?
Yeah, I'd say infrastructure
Yeah, I'd say infrastructure queue is the place for it.
Very weird.
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Co-maintainers Page
Wanted to add a link to this page here as an example - http://www.comaintainer.com
It's very useful to have a list like this and then to regularly use the Drupal infrastructure to support projects that need maintainers.
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OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide