Contributors and Communication Pathways

Contributors and Communication Pathways#

Your project is likely to be better if what you create is used by others and they share their ideas and feedback to add new features or improvements. When designing your project, the Goals and aims are as important as their contributors. When designing your project, it is important to think about who the contributors are and how they will collaborate in the project (as described in Landing Page - README File and Roadmapping).

It is also important to set clear expectations for your contributors and describe resources available to facilitate their participation, which discuss in this subchapter. The working relationships you establish with your contributors by welcoming them, engaging with them and supporting them, makes your contributors feel valued and excited about their contributions.

Identifying Your Contributors#

Most collaborations in community projects are established and maintained with the contributors. Effective collaboration means that all contributors are given the possibility to combine their diverse perspectives and skills to create meaningful resources. They contribute to the project in various ways, for example by developing documentation or code, fixing bugs, suggesting new features or supporting others.

To make sure that you target a diverse set of collaborators, start by designing Persona for your project.

Note

A persona is a detail of an imaginary user or member, based on real-world observations and understandings of existing members or potential future members. It is meaningful when paired with pathways through which these personas engage with a project.

When you have selected a few personas that capture your idea of contributors who want to involve, you can develop pathways that they can take to engage and contribute to your project (see Persona).

Setting Communication Pathways#

When setting up your communication pathways, there are some important things to consider such as the following:

  • How easy is it for the community to find these channels and subscribe/unsubscribe to them?

  • Are they moderated? Under-represented groups may not participate if a channel is free for all.

  • How easy is it for members of the community to find and join specific conversations they are interested in?

  • Will it be a “noisy” channel (for example, lots of notifications)?

  • Can users control or filter what kind of information they receive?

See Communications in Open Source Projects to understand various features you can consider for setting a communication channel for your project.

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