Thread by @dwcheatham

OK, here goes! My first twitter 🧵! Here to recap some of the early findings from our Maintainers Listening Tour that I shared earlier this week during #AllThingsOpen 1

We are on a journey to open source diversity, equity and inclusion within OSS communities. Over a 12 month period, we set out to launch an open source DEI survey, conduct a Maintainers Listening Tour and execute a 12-month pilot focused on maintainers and students. 2

We completed the 2021 OS DEI Survey in partnership with @linuxfoundation. The full report will be released in December. linuxfoundation.org/press-release/… 3

We’ve kicked off the 12-month pilot for All In for Students and the students are freaking awesome. They deserve their own thread so make sure you come back for that in the next few weeks! 4

So how did we get to the Maintainers Listening Tour? Well we heard from so many folx around open source that inclusion happens at the community level and maintainers and community leaders really set the tone for inclusion in their communities. 5

We launched the Maintainers Listening Tour to hear the stories, experiences and lessons learned from maintainers. We also wanted to learn what more we can do to support them in advancing a culture of DEI in their communities. 6

Well here are six things we’ve learned so far. 7

#1: Maintainers love the intent of hackathons and sponsored community programs but the work req’d can be a bit much. Oftentimes, uncoordinated efforts can lead to a significant amount of work for maintainers to close these contributions out. 8

Maintainers wish that the sponsoring orgs for hackathons and community sponsored programs would partner more and provide directions to participants that are a bit more prescriptive. 9

Maintainers can share for example, which very specific part of the project they need help with, that an outsider can do? Are there certain issues you would love for these contributors to resolve? 10

What if those contributors were doing things like helping remove dead names or non inclusive language from code or contributing to docs? Those critical tasks would go a long way to advancing inclusion within a community. 11

#2 Maintainers would love more opportunities for cross collaboration, such as sharing resources, lessons learned and technical support beyond documentation. In open source, we collaborate on code, why can’t we collaborate on inclusion? 12

#3 We need to get clear on what we are actually trying to solve. Here are some things we *thought* we needed to solve, but it was a bit more nuanced. Does this mean I’m creating a sub :thread: now? 13

We thought we still needed to focus on getting more communities to have a code of conduct. But most communities have these now. 14

What maintainers shared is that they need ENFORCED code of conduct and training in intervention, de-escalation and unconscious bias to help them understand best practices to address code of conduct violations. 15

We were focused on converting new contributors into repeat contributors. Maintainers shared that most new contributors are experienced and come to their community to solve a specific problem or address a specific security issue. They don’t come to stay and that’s ok. 16

Maintainers actually stated they need help in ways to identify that small percentage of new contributors who they can mentor and advance to leadership positions within their community. 17

OK, I’m going back to the big 🧵18

#4 There is a disconnect in the process of becoming a community leader. According to the 2021 Open DEI Survey, 53% of maintainers/community leaders agree with the statement “There is a clear process to become a leader or maintainer in an open source project.” 19

In that same survey, only 36% of all survey respondents (maintainers + non-maintainers) agreed with that statement. 20

#5 Everyone knows how important documentation is to a community. It is often the most cited thing that can be done to advance DEI in a community (see how in the pic below). Well how are we doing with documentation? 21

The 2021 OS DEI Survey results revealed 72% of Maintainers/Community Leaders agree that the open source projects they work on have documentation in addition to technical documentation. Less than half (47%) of everyone else agrees. 22

Remember stay tuned: The full report for the 2021 DEI Survey will be released in December. To learn more about the Open Source DEI survey: linuxfoundation.org/press-release/… 23

#6 Maintainers recognize that their attempts to increase diversity w/in their communities largely rely on engaging personal networks. Well if your personal networks are homogenous…? This tweet sums it up well ​​

https://twitter.com/sianmorson/status/1447730766180409353?s=21

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Well what are we going to do about it? We’ve created an open source community called All In, whose mission is to advance DEI in open source by focusing on access, community, equity, and data. 25 Uh oh...meet me at the next twitter thread!