idea
An opt-in module in FAS allows for gathering of recommendations and contribution data for a user. This is used to build an semiautomagic CV, with verifiable recommendations, that can follow a contributor in the rest of their life.
goal
People work hard in the Fedora Project. They write smart things, think smart ideas, and make stuff just smart. They should be able to benefit from this collective information for future education, employment, or any situation where a CV and recommendations can be useful.
This is opt-in specifically so people are not feeling tracked by spooky data machines. Only contributors who opt-in would have their Fedora-related data warehoused in this way.
implicit - important
- The methods we use in open source collaboration are valuable to engage in, stuff gets done and you learn skills/experience;
- Exposing how one is involved there can show that value in ways meaningful to our schooling, career, and other aspects of life.
The trick is, someone has to agree to #1 for #2 to be safe to show them.
misc
Tons of metrics to expose:
- Count of blog posts on planet, tag cloud from aggregate over the years.
- Wiki pages edited.
- Animation of collaboration via any useful SCM, maybe wiki.
- Number of emails to Fedora lists, presence in threads, threads started.
- IRC stuff - automagic way to tell count of questions asked or answered?
A way for people to recommend each other with specific stories and details!
get started right now
We could start personal recommendations right now with User Talk pages:
- Introduce the meme.
- Add a section to a user's talk page, e.g. User talk:Quaid, either following a format or going freeform.
- Sign the entry with the special 4-tildes username/timestamp tag ~~~~
- It's verifiable via history
- This format allows the recommendations to be sucked in to a future module in FAS.
== Recommendation for Friendly Contributor from Dr. Thankful Participant == <!-- Hidden bits that help automagic processes --> To whom it may concern: Friendly Contributor is someone I've worked with in the Fedora Project for the last two years. I heartily recommend Friendly. In the past, I have observed while working with Friendly: being friendly to new contributors, building a popular new tool for contributors, Foo Bar (link), and maintaining software packages for Friendly's college class. The software packages is where I first met Friendly. I was a PhD student and was using the software Friendly packaged, and when I discovered a bug in the packaging, Friendly was very fast and efficient with getting a fix out to us. From there grew a collaborative relationship, where Friendly would help improve our team's code and experience using this package. In this process, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Friendly was a High School senior taking a community college programming class in Perl. The quality of our doctoral project was improved with the help of a person working on outside of class projects as a pre-undergraduate! Thanks - Dr. Thankful Participant ~~~~
making it safe to show
You may not want to reveal all your data to all audiences.
Each part tracked should be a granular opt-in. Maybe I don't want people to know I typed that many lines in to IRC. And definitely don't track when I'm typing them.
You should have a way to create a custom (burnable/one-time or permanent) URL that points to a chosen subset of CV data. This lets you reveal specific details to specific audiences.
negative recommendations
This should not be a tool for harming someone's reputation.
Only positive reviews should be included. A lack of positive reviews is a statement itself.