Stop Reinventing the Wheel! Community Management in 3 Steps

### Overview In this presentation, Karsten Wade (also known as Quaid), a principal community architect in Red Hat’s Open Source Program Office (OSPO) and long-time contributor to *The Open Source Way* guidebook, advocates for community managers and maintainers to stop reinventing practices in isolation. Instead of presenting a high-level theoretical framework, Wade demonstrates a practical, three-step methodology for evaluating and improving open source community health: studying/analyzing a project, performing an assessment and creating a report, and acting on recommendations. Beyond the mechanics of project audits, Wade issues a call to action for practitioners to connect one-on-one across projects to build relationships and shared stewardship practices.

### Key Topics - **Connecting Community Stewards**: Emphasizing peer-to-peer conversations (over virtual coffee or tea, or in triads) across open source projects to exchange lessons learned rather than relying solely on trial and error. - **The Open Source Way Guidebook and Audit Worksheet**: Utilizing tools from *The Open Source Way* (including version 2.0 and measuring success guidelines) and a structured assessment worksheet to evaluate projects systematically. - **External Perspective in Project Assessments**: Auditing projects strictly through the eyes of an outside user or first-time contributor to evaluate whether necessary resources and pathways are actually visible and accessible. - **Inclusivity in Documentation and Language**: Ensuring documentation does not deter new or underrepresented participants, specifically avoiding minimizing language (e.g., words like "simply" or "just") that can alienate readers.

### Technical Details & Demonstration Wade walks through the evaluation worksheet, explaining how its core categories map directly to chapters in *The Open Source Way* guidebook. An assessment is typically targeted to take two to four hours and evaluates several key operational areas: - **Structure and Infrastructure**: How the project organizes itself, makes governance visible, and structures repos and navigation. - **Documentation**: Assesses quick-start guides, installation steps, and clarity. Wade references research from Demetris Cheatham and allinopensource.org highlighting that documentation quality is consistently the number one barrier for marginalized and underrepresented contributors. - **Outreach & Calls to Action (CTAs)**: Examines primary engagement prompts (e.g., newsletter signups, downloads, registrations), blogging cadence (recommending predictable consistency, such as monthly or quarterly, over sporadic posting), and curated social media presence. - **Release Management & Activity**: How release notes, change logs, and daily/monthly activity are tracked and communicated. - **Licensing & Conduct**: Verifying the presence and clarity of open source licenses and codes of conduct (typically checked in primary navigation or footers).

Wade tests these criteria live across multiple audience-suggested projects: 1. **Green Software Foundation**: Checked calls to action (newsletter, endorsing principles) and documentation pathways. Wade noted that dropping prospective users directly from top-level website links into GitHub readmes can be a jarring or intimidating user experience without prior warning. 2. **Unikraft**: Evaluated quick-start documentation and release notes. Wade highlighted the presence of minimizing words such as "simply", advising that maintainers conduct search-and-replace audits to eliminate words like "simply" or "just" that can make novice users feel inadequate. 3. **OpenHIE (ohie.org)**: Assessed outreach, audience targeting, and onboarding workflows for health information exchanges, noting the importance of clear calls to action, open data privacy assurances, and predictable blog updates.

### Takeaways Wade emphasizes that community health audits should yield an actionable punch list (such as creating style guides, meetup calendars, or metric-tracking processes). However, process tools should remain secondary to human connection. Maintainers and community architects are encouraged to reach out to peers across diverse ecosystems to share practices and build community before formalizing processes.