Volunteering is am important part of Open projects. We welcome volunteers but emphasize that this is a significant commitment. Several volunteers have become valued, faithful contributors; Here are some:
- Ayush Garg
- Emanuel Faria
- Giulia Arsuffi
- Clyde Davies and team
- past interns (especially Ambreen Hamadani and Shweata Hegde)
Volunteers are a common feature of Open projects and there are varied roles:
- testing the system
- adding data
- dictionaries
- documentation and outreach
- diversification of the science (e.g. adding new organisms)
- language and geographic diversity (e.g. documentation, translations)
- outreach
- adding code
Volunteers are NOT a "free resource". Each volunteer incurs a cost:
- induction
- training
- integration of data and code
- opportunity cost (e.g. holding the project back for a period)
- social management
- failure recovery (i.e. half finished projects)
All of this takes management, time and energy.
The key aspects of volunteer contributions are usually of two types:
i.e. adding one small bit at a time. For example this could be dictionary checking or enhancement, entry by entry. Or annotating articles. Something that can be completed in an hour.
These are "nice to have" but not currently critical. They include tutorials, documentation, language extensions, exploration of displays and analysis (e.g. plotting , machine learning).
In general new volunteers will not be involved in code or design.
A new volunteer:
- should have no core impact if their activity does not work out.
- is expected to have learnt our technology , data, and structure. We cannot provide personal training (normally they have to learn from the existing docs).
- should have already demonstrated their ability and commitment (perhaps by building an extension project).