What you do matters: Making one thing better for open source (#97)

What kind of work do you want to do?

What work do you do that is most urgently your responsibility? What are the consequences of your work? What has the power to move you?

Compassion, collaboration. These are my touchstones. But I feel more overwhelmed than ever these days, with many things competing for my attention, time and emotional resources. A certain urgency.

It’s a feeling echoed by many of my colleagues. That urgency is underscored by changes in our political landscape, our environment, and our professional landscape. “Each day, our work is changing — more quickly than it ever has before,” Ethan Marcotte said to developers and designers last month. “Here’s the question we have to ask ourselves: what do we want that change to be?”

What is the work you must do?

In 2011, Jeff Eaton described moving up the open source ladder of engagement, from consumer, to contributor, to the “ponies and unicorns level of nirvana” of collaborator, engaging with others who have similar needs and actively working on a shared solution.

If you work with open source software, you know one thing remains true: its strength, security and resilience comes from its community of contributors and collaborators.

Does contributing or collaborating feel urgent to you? Does inclusive design, documentation, code, and mentoring others in more diverse, inclusive teams have the power to move you? If so, you’re in luck! The open source community needs you, urgently, to move its strength, security and resilience intentionally, in responsible directions.

Musician Leonard Cohen said that to cut through the "chattering and meaningless debate that is occupying most of my attention, I have to come up with something that really speaks to my deepest interests.” Only a song that has “a certain urgency” could do that for him.

Open source isn't about rock stars; it's about drilling holes in sheet metal. It's habit, built in the service of urgency for the work you must do. It’s work that matters. Because design matters, and how things are coded matters, and what you work on matters, and who does this work matters.

So I invite you to get started. Find the Drupal issues queue, or grab a friendly tool like CodeTriage and jump into a Github repo’s issue queue for a project doing important work. Join a group doing work to build more diverse, inclusive teams and conferences. Make one thing better.

towards a more civil user experience

I was visiting a knitting tutorial site, reading something, and I got one of those semi-annoying popover forms. It seems they are getting more and more aggressive and catty these days.

Option 1: Sign up now! All magical secrets will be revealed, plus free kittens!

Option 2: No thanks, I hate kittens and am a stupid oaf.

I don't know about you, dear reader, but these are an instant turn off for me. Like, I will *never* sign up for your newsletter if you imply or ask me to agree that I am stupid, uninformed, lazy, etc. Whether or not they actually increase subscription rates, I think they are part of the problem, not the solution.

User experience matters. User interface designers, content strategists strive to create excellent experiences online, and that includes treating visitors (prospective customers) with civility. 

Compassion and civility are not the exclusive purview of tea parties and monastic retreats.

People who want to read or interact with us online shouldn't face insulting messages if they don't want to sign up for our newsletter. In some cases it might be funny, but it's too frequently overdone.

Show your visitors a little love.

Feel free to be lovingly persistent. But permit your viewers to politely decline your online subscription forms. They will leave with a better impression of your site, and be more likely to return.

 We have no idea about the kind of day the person visiting our web form is having.  Let us strive to be gentle with one another, online and off. Life is hard enough.