New Developers/Quarterly/2017-10

Overview
Goal, possible candidates, scope, etc.

Key findings

 * Finding 1
 * Finding 2
 * Finding 3

Timeline

 * YYYY-MM-DD: Etc

New developers metrics and trends
All numbers refer to volunteer developers only.

Trends in attraction and retention
These are the KPIs of the Onboarding New Developers program.

Developers contributing patches for review
187 developers contributed between July–September 2017. (Source)

New developers attracted
51 new developers contributed between July–September 2017. (Source)

New developers retained
Percentage of developers active one year (±3months) after their first contribution, out of all new developers attracted one year ago. (Source: Calculation on data)

(source)

Review of changesets by new developers
148 changesets were contributed by new developers. (Source: Calculation on data )

New developers who contributed more than one changeset
17 out of 45 (31.4%) (Source: "Contribs" column of "New Authors")

Projects with most received contributions by new developers
55 new developers contributed to 28 repositories. (Source: "Repos by New Authors")

Outreach events

 * Wikimania Hackathon 2017 (August 2017):
 * Attracted XX new developers, out of YY developer attendees (ZZ %)
 * Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 (May 2017):
 * Attracted XX new developers, out of YY developer attendees (ZZ %)
 * Retained XX new developers who were still active in next quarter (July–September 2017), out of YY attracted new developers (ZZ %)

Outreach programs

 * Google Summer of Code 2016 (May–August 2016):
 * Attracted XX new developers.
 * Retained XX new developers who were still active one year (±3months) after their first contribution in the outreach program (ZZ %)
 * Outreachy Round 13 (December 2016–March 2017):
 * Attracted XX new developers.
 * Retained XX new developers who were still active one year (±3months) after their first contribution in the outreach program (ZZ %)

Survey analysis
We sent a survey to new developers who submitted code for the first time during July - September 2017 timeframe. The survey was designed using the Qualtrics platform, with a goal of understanding more clearly demographics and background, motivations, challenges and needs of our new developers. We planned to pilot the survey in two rounds: Out of the 35 new developers to whom we reached out, 9 (25.7%) people completed the survey. Four people started filling out the survey but didn’t finish, indicating that the completion rate of our survey was 69%.
 * 35 new developers who submitted code in July or August (still ongoing)
 * XX new developers who submitted code in September (yet to do)

Note: Since we got quite a few responses, the analysis of this survey may not be entirely justified, and actions for next steps and recommendations indicated in this report (coming soon! ) may not have many conclusions from the survey.

Below are the results from the survey:

Other professional development activities outside work
Contributing to open source, attending conferences, leading local Wikimedia community, organizing meetups, etc.

Contributions
Types of contributions Frequency of making contributions {| style="min-width: 900px" !


 * {Graph:Chart |
 * Frequency of making contributions
 * 1 – Once in a few months (44.44%)
 * 2 – Once a month (0%)
 * 3 – A few times a month (33.33%)
 * 4 – Does not apply to me because: (0%)
 * 5 – A couple times a week (11.11%)
 * 6 – Once a day (0%)
 * 7 – Multiple times a day (11.11%)
 * 8 – Other (0%)
 * 8 – Other (0%)






 * 44.44% of respondents of this survey said they contribute code to Wikimedia projects once in a few months and 33.33% a times a month
 * }
 * }

Motivations
New developers who participated in the survey indicated that they first heard about Wikimedia as a place to contributing code: First topics or projects new developers worked on: lexeme, wikiclass, bug fix, extension: ArticleToCategory2, Pywikibot and Wikimedia site request, newsletter, etc. New developers chose to work on a project as they:
 * Through Wikimedia members at a conference
 * From a friend
 * Through African Wikimedia developers project
 * Github
 * By installing MediaWiki themselves
 * Taking inspiration from bug fixes made by viewing them on Wikimedia's Gerrit
 * Found it interesting
 * Project was a good fit for their graduate studies
 * Could share their research by working on the project
 * Wanted to improve the project
 * Wanted to get started with fixing bugs, submitting patches, etc.
 * Were being asked to do so at work
 * Wanted to learn new things and to minimize burden on Wikimedia developers
 * Heard about it at a hackathon

Challenges
Understanding of Wikimedia's code contribution process

Suggestions for improvement
Here are some suggestions made by new developers (responses below have been only slightly edited):
 * Standard toolbox over in-house or unusual systems (Gerrit, Phragile, ...)
 * More autonomy for development teams: build a trust-based DevOps culture allowing teams to adopt Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery practices and deliver value in small iterations (current deployment guide mentions a lead time of over six weeks for new services!).
 * Breaking focused services out of the monolithic MediaWiki core.
 * Be bold with code changes. Approve more patches in a timely fashion. Enlarge the group of developers who are authorized to approve patches.
 * Surveying and documenting conventions on how to interact with other developers through Phabricator and Gerrit.
 * Git commit message guidelines suggests "To express that a commit resolves a bug, add Bug: Txxx in the footer at the end of the commit message." What do you do when the commit doesn't resolve the bug because the bug has multiple items? The "Bug: Txxx" footer should _always_ be there, because that automatically adds a change notice to Phabricator. That convention isn't made particularly clear from the guidelines.
 * Fix the IP ban that devoid access to Phabricator
 * Be better on follow up issues
 * Better guides. Make more documentation on Wikitech. So that we can contribute more.