Hi all!
Today I had a look on my github profile page and I recognized, that some of the commits I made to Wikimedia projects, are not listed in the contributions activity list. Because my ego is sometimes really big (;)), I started looking around where they're. My finding was (according to the github help[1]), that a commit and a repo of the commit must fulfill some requirements:
All of: The email address used for the commits is associated with your GitHub account. The commits were made in a standalone repository, not a fork. The commits were made: In the repository's default branch (usually master) In the gh-pages branch (for repositories with Project Pages sites)
-> all of them are fulfilled by my commits
And at least one of: You are a collaborator on the repository or are a member of the organization that owns the repository. You have forked the repository. You have opened a pull request or issue in the repository. You have starred the repository.
Ok, that's problematic: Because we use gerrit for code-review, I normally does not fork any project of Wikimedia on github, why should I? So, this doesn't sound like a solution for the problem, because forking, just to have the contributions visible sounds like a bad solution at all. I could, however, Open a pull request or an issue for all projects, but, apart from the work doing this manually, this sounds like wasted time, too, as we don't use pull requests on github and use phabricator instead of github issues for the organization of work, that's why this is not a solution, too. Star-ing all repositories would be, from the meaning, totally ok, however, there're two problems: The manual work to do that sounds like wasted time, too, and I would use the star only, if I really like the repository, like I did before for some of the projects (core, ConfirmEdit, ...). Doing it just for getting the contributions visible on the profile sounds bad to me, too, perfonally. Being a collaborator is also probably not the right solution, as that would require, that someone invites me to all projects under Wikimedia, which is a lot of work for at least two people, and it's wasted time, too.
So, I was wondering, if, and if yes how, I, as a community contributor, could be a member of the Wikimedia organization on github. I searched on mediawiki.org and wikitech, but couldn't find a policy or information page about it, and that's what this thread should be all about :P
I asked hashar and he looked at the people, who are already part of the org, and found some volunteers, so he invited me, too. However, I think we should've at least a broader discussion, and hopefully we can create a help page or a public policy for if, when and how a volunteer developer can be a member of the Wikimedia org on github.
So I'm open for opinions and discussions, probably there's already some information available, and I just haven't found it? :)
Thanks for your time Florian
[1] https://help.github.com/articles/why-are-my-contributions-not-showing-up-on- my-profile/