[Haskell-community] How to make the community more welcoming?

[Jason Dagit]

I stumbled on this article today:
http://sarah.thesharps.us/2015/10/06/what-makes-a-good-community/

I think the author brings up some good points. I tried to share this on
/r/haskell, perhaps unsuccessfully:
https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/3nw9dh/what_makes_a_good_community/

I'm hoping that this list is a better place to discuss the points made in
that article. Below are my thoughts (mostly copied from reddit). My point
with bringing this up is to help us improve our community. It's not meant
to unfairly criticize the actions of any particular person or anything like
that. I like Haskell and I want our community to be the best that it can
be. Are there specific things within reach that we could adopt from the
examples in the article?

I think we largely have level 0 and 1 down. It looks like level 2 where we
start to loose our footing.

Level 2: meaningful contributions





The next step is figuring out what to do with these eager new diverse
> candidates. If they’ve made it this far through the gauntlet of toxic tech
> culture, they’re likely to be persistent, smart, and seeking a challenge.
> If you don’t have meaningful bigger projects for them to contribute to,
> they’ll move onto the next shiny thing.
> Signs of a level 2 welcoming community:
>


* Newbie todo lists
> * Larger, self-contained projects
> * Welcoming, available mentors
> * Programs to pay newbies (internships, summer of code, etc)
> * Contributors are thanked with heartfelt sincerity and an explicit
> acknowledgment of what was good and what could be improved
> * Community creates a casual feedback channel for generating ideas with
> newcomers (irc, mailing list, slack, whatever works)
> * Code of conduct encourages developers to assume good intent


We use the google summer of code as a way to pay/mentor new contributors,
but I think we need more mentors and more newbie friendly projects. Just
need to make it happen, I guess.

Also, it looks like we incorporate some of the Level 3 things too, with
committee rotations.

Thanks for your time,
Jason
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