How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?

[Katherine Cox-Buday]

Summary: for people who don't contribute to Guix a lot, each 
contribution has
very high cognitive overhead. Can we work to reduce that?

Hey all,

Contributing to Guix is currently pretty difficult for me. I'm a Mom with a
full-time job, and anything outside of my job that requires a lot of 
executive
functioning (e.g. lots of manual, detailed, steps) is very difficult for 
me to
get correct. That last part is what I wanted to discuss, because that's 
the part
that prevents me from contributing more than I do, and I think there are
probably others whom are impacted by this.

When I have some time to contribute, I usually stall out at the "submit 
this for
review" because of the amount of cognitive overhead required. I've written a
script for myself that tries to perform all the steps including running 
the git
command to submit the patch, and this has helped me, but that this is 
necessary
for me to do might be something that, if addressed, could help others.

Here are some examples of things that cause issues for me. This is not a 
list of
grievances; it's my way of attempting to demonstrate the "shape" of the 
issue:

    I signed up on Savannah with the intention of applying to be a 
committer.
    Savannah closed my account one or two days later due to inactivity.

    I can't ever seem to get the GNU style commit messages correct. I 
use the
    templates provided, but those don't cover all cases, and I've even 
gotten
    feedback in a review to change a message it created.

    I don't use the email-based patch workflow day-to-day, so this is 
another
    area where I spend a lot of time trying to make sure I'm doing things
    correctly.

    My script runs `guix style` and `guix lint`, but its suggestions aren't
    always correct. I suspect I've submitted some patches with nonsensical
    changes due to implicitly trusting these tools.

    Maybe 
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2023-02/msg00030.html
    addresses this, but manually managing Guile imports is laborious. As a
    fledgling schemer, I often forget which imports I needed just for
    development.

I think I would summarize the core of these examples as:

    "At every step of the contribution process, I must manually check that
    multiple things are correct. With limited available executive 
functioning,
    and no automation, this is very difficult to do correctly, and an 
easy place
    for contributors to stop."

I think that if I were working on Guix more frequently, I would build 
habits I
didn't have to think about, and these wouldn't be the large issues they are
for me. But because of the nature of a project like Guix, we want 
contributions
from people of all kinds of backgrounds, not just people who have the 
privilege
to work on Guix a lot.

I have given a list of issues to a group of people who are presumably
analytical, and I think the natural inclination is to go point-by-point 
and make
arguments for/against. Instead of that[*], I invite you to address the more
abstract issue: (should/how do) we reduce friction for making contributions?

Here are some things I've considered:

* Contributing to Guix is not for you

    I would be really sad if someone ever said this, but I guess it's a
    possibility. Maybe someone like me just can't be a contributor to 
Guix until
    I have the bandwidth to manage all the details. I would 
preemptively argue
    that diversity of thought and experiences usually leads to better 
things.

* It's OK to make lots of mistakes

    The people who have reviewed my code have been generous both with 
their time
    and fixing my mistakes and then applying. Maybe this model is OK? I 
still
    feel guilty every time a reviewer has to correct an oversight I've 
made. I
    also want to become a committer, but I don't know how that would 
work if
    I'm regularly making mistakes. Obviously people would still be 
reviewing my
    commits, but presumably a committer should not regularly be making
    mistakes.

* We could support a managed web-based workflow

    I think this has been brought up a lot of times, and I don't have a 
clear
    idea of what's been said. But I think a lot of developers these 
days are
    more familiar with this style, and we could still maintain 
self-sovereignty
    if we hosted something.

* Encourage upstream communities like "Guix 'R Us" 
(https://sr.ht/~whereiseveryone/guixrus/)

    Maybe Guix proper continues as is and we foster various upstream 
communities
    that utilize different styles and batch their contributions?

What do you all think? Does this affect anyone else?

[*] But if you have workflow suggestions, I'm all ears!

--
Katherine