The problem: Getting involved in Kubernetes is difficult for first time contributors. The Kubernetes project is huge, there are lots of meetings, events, and SIGs, and in addition to basic Git knowledge it requires specialised knowledge of Kubenetes-specific Git requirements (i.e. Prow).
The kubernetes/community repository does a good job of documenting the existence of SIGs and general processes, but it doesn’t do as good a job at surfacing meetings/events attached to different SIGs (buried in a google calendar) or documenting basic Git processes. However, it suffers for
Proposal: kubernetes/community into a full-blown site Take the content on kubernetes/community and build it out into a full blown site with its own URL, community.kubernetes.io, or similar. Remove the https://kubernetes.io/community/ subpage and link to this new site instead.
This website would be:
- An index of all SIGs and and WG’s (as it currently does)
- A home for new contributors and content for them, teaching them how to:
- .. get started with Git and GitHub
- .. start contributing to kubernetes/kubernetes (development env setup)
- .. get started with kubernetes docs & blogs
- .. get involved with the SIGs (Events)
- .. what the overall shape and organisation of the Kubernetes contributor community is
- A home for Kubernetes branding & graphic assets, like icons
- A home/central place for all Kubernetes-related social media accounts/streams
- A home for the Code of Conduct in all languages
Why its own website?
- There’s lots of duplication between https://kubernetes.io/docs/contribute/ and https://github.com/kubernetes/community.
- GitHub repositories are low visibility in comparison to a website.
- A static site generator site isn’t significantly harder to maintain/manage than a GitHub repo of markdown files.
- Over in SIG Docs-land, one of the most common questions we get is: is there a one stop shop for:
- … setting up your environment to work on docs, or some other part of k8s?
- … understanding GitHub and Git enough that you can contribute?
- … opening my first pull request?
- … becoming a reviewer or approver?
- … figuring out which parts of kubernetes I can contribute to?
- … learning more about events and meetings?
Why not roll it into kubernetes.io?
- Personally, I think it deserves a bit of separation/to have its own life outside of the main kubernetes/website repository (this also makes it clearer as to who ‘ownership’ lies with)
- kubernetes/website has issues around having too many owners/approvers/people with write access in that repository due to translations of k8s docs. I think we’d do better
- The first time k8s contributor might not necessarily be a docs contributor. Right now, the content in https://kubernetes.io/docs/contribute/ is geared towards docs contributors.
Questions I don’t know the answer to, but that are relevant:
- What happens when certain repos/SIGs etc go their own way with git processes? Who is responsible for owning that content?