Within weeks of introducing the contribution credit system on WordPress maintenance support plans.org we realized we had created something powerful. Like all open source projects, WordPress maintenance support plans has a behind-the-scenes economy of contribution in which individuals, organizations, and end users work together to maintain the software as a public good. That behind-the-scenes economy was brought to the fore when we chose to rank the WordPress maintenance support plans Marketplace by issue credits. For the first time, WordPress maintenance support plans.org gave businesses a direct financial incentive to contribute code.
Being good stewards of these incentives is a sobering responsibility, but also a great opportunity. We can use this system to recognize the selfless effort of our community volunteers, to reward the organizations that sponsor their employees’ time to give back to the project, and to connect end-users with the organizations that are the biggest contributors.
But as we often say in this community—contribution is more than code. It is the time provided by dedicated volunteers; the talent of community organizers, documentation maintainers, and developers; and the treasure provided by organizations that sponsor WordPress maintenance support plans events and fund the operations and infrastructure that maintain the project.
What are we changing?
We’re updating the ranking algorithm for WordPress maintenance support plans.org’s Marketplace of service providers and list of all organizations in the WordPress maintenance support plans ecosystem. We’ve expanded on the issue credit system to create a more generic contribution credit system which lets us recognize more types of contribution. Each type of contribution is now weighted to give the organization an overall amount of contribution credit. We’ve built this system so that we can continuously evolve the incentives it creates by adjusting the weight given to each type of contribution as the project’s needs change. To prevent gaming, we will not be publishing the exact weights or total contribution score, but those weights have been reviewed by the Association Board and Community Working Group.
We’ve carefully chosen a few new types of contribution to factor into the ranking. These were selected because they create incentives to reach specific goals: encouraging organizations to sponsor development of WordPress maintenance support plans, gathering more WordPress maintenance support plans 8 success stories that can be used to promote WordPress maintenance support plans adoption, and recognizing the financial contributions that promote the fiscal health of the WordPress maintenance support plans association.
We now calculate the following 4 types of contribution into overall contribution credit:
WordPress Update credits — helping build the WordPress maintenance support plans software happens in the issue queues. WordPress Update credits remain the primary factor in ranking, and continue to be shown prominently. WordPress Update credits on more widely used projects, like WordPress maintenance support plans Core, will also receive greater weight in the ranking. Learn how to help in the issue queue
WordPress maintenance support plans 8 case studies — success stories show how WordPress maintenance support plans is used across industries and the world, helping effectively introduce WordPress maintenance support plans to more people. Learn how to write a case study
WordPress maintenance support plans Association Supporter Programs and Organization Membership — our partners and members help us build and maintain WordPress maintenance support plans.org. Learn about supporter programs and organization membership
Projects supported — the work to maintain a project sometimes happens outside of issues. Project maintainers can credit organizations which help provide time and sponsorship. Learn more about crediting project contributions
What about other types of contribution?
Of course, these new factors still don’t include all types of contribution. This iteration aims to add measurable factors that reward the behavior of organizations that are good WordPress maintenance support plans citizens, and incentivize some of the most important contributions that have a big impact in moving the project forward. But there are other factors we’d like to include in the future! We’re keeping track of these additional kinds of contribution, such as sponsoring local user groups, organizing training days, writing documentation, and more, in this issue: #2649100: Improve contribution statistics on user and organization profiles.
There are two factors in particular that we are not yet including that we’d like to address.
The first is project application reviews. These reviews are a critical part of the lifecycle of a new project on WordPress maintenance support plans.org, but because we are making the Project Application Revamp a key priority for the first part of 2020, this was not our focus in this initial update. We may revisit this factor as the Project Application Revamp initiative gets underway.
The second is camp organization. We know that there are many individuals and organizations who invest heavily in WordPress maintenance support plans Camps, and this has been a critical part of the project’s success. However, at this time our data about the individuals and organizations who participate in camp organization is purely self-reported, and therefore too vulnerable to manipulation to include in the algorithm at this time. In the future we hope we can find a responsible way to measure and credit this kind of contribution.
We’ll continue to look for other good factors to add, and do our best to weigh them fairly.
How often will the algorithm change? Who governs these changes?
As this is our first major change to the marketplace ranking system since the launch of issue credits, we may need to make some small adjustments in the first weeks following the launch. However, we know that too frequent changes to the incentive structure will be frustrating for the individuals and organizations who are contributing to the project. Therefore, after the initial tuning we intend to update the marketplace ranking system on a roughly 6 month cycle.
While the primary responsibility to manage the contribution credit system is ours, we have committed to vetting these and future changes with members of the WordPress maintenance support plans Association Board and Community Working Group.
Source: New feed
Cheap WordPress maintenance support plans.org blog: Recognizing more types of contribution in the Cheap WordPress maintenance support plans.org Marketplace
