Effective ways to contribute to Drupal

Event: DrupalCamp Pune 2023

Drupal core contribution has the significant impact on your careers when you are a Drupal developer. When contributions are done in planned and constructive manner, it helps community. Spammy or incorrect contributions harms individual as well as organizations. In this session I am planning to cover various effective ways to contribute to Drupal that are quite effective and helps the community in a positive way.

In this session we are be discussing:

Types of contributions that one can do being a community member.
Effective ways to contribute to Drupal.
Simple tips to increase the contribution count (in a positive way)
How to ensure that you’re not gaming contribution credit system
Emphasis on learning rather than getting credits.

Transcript

1. Mohit Aghera
   Drupal Developer
   Effective ways to contribute to
   Drupal
   

   View Slide

2. I’m Mohit Aghera
   Who am I?
   Today I’ll cover:
   Drupal Developer @ PreviousNext.
   Drupal.org: mohit_aghera
   Twitter: mohit-rocks
   ● Types of contributions that we can make
   ● Things to keep in mind while doing contributions
   ● Best practices for meaningful contributions
   

   View Slide

3. Established in early 2009 to provide full service
   consulting, design and development for large scale
   Drupal websites.
   Who is PreviousNext?
   Successfully delivered many Drupal based projects for Government, Higher Education,
   Media and Communications clients.
   Very experienced team with long term staff members.
   Strong contribution and involvement in the Drupal community.
   

   View Slide

4. Who have we worked with?
   

   View Slide

5. Why should I contribute❓❓
   🤔
   

   View Slide

6. Motivation for Contributions🏅🫶📈
   ● Reputation, recognition
   ● Giving back to community
   ● Personal growth, skill development
   ● Solving problems and making an impact
   ● Learning from peer review and feedback
   

   View Slide

7. What can you contribute to! 󰳕📄📦🧪
   ● Code Contributions
   ● Documentation Contributions
   ● User Support
   ○ Support on forum
   ○ Drupal stackexchange
   ● Community Organizing
   ● Event organising, Volunteering
   ● Testing and Quality Assurance
   ● Marketing
   ● Mentoring
   ● Translations
   

   View Slide

8. Effective ways to do code contributions
   

   View Slide

9. Find what motivates you 💡⚡
   ● Identify which part of core excites you the most
   ● Emphasis on learning rather than getting credits
   ● Contribute to specific sub-system
   

   View Slide

10. Benefits!
    ● You’re less like to do low hanging contributions
    ● More learning and exploring
    ● Attain in-depth knowledge of Drupal core.
    

    View Slide

11. Avoid low hanging contributions 🌳
    ● Avoid creating empty forks for issues
    ● Avoid the urge to re-roll issues
    ● Put more focus on learning rather than credits
    ● Avoid working on PHPCs issues
    

    View Slide

12. Re-rolling issues 🗞
    ● Perform re-roll “only” when required
    ● Ensure that it doesn’t cause regression
    ● Validate the existing test cases
    ● Run “commit-code-check.sh” from “core/scripts” folder
    

    View Slide

13. Issue review guidelines 📝
    ● Follow the issue review guidelines here
    ● Avoid reporting false RTBC issues
    ● Add proper comments and perform code reviews
    

    View Slide

14. Initiative driven contribution🤝 󰞵 🙌
    ● Join core initiatives and be a part of it
    ● Strategic initiatives vs community initiatives
    ● Don’t just attend meetings, do the actual work on issues
    ● Take ownership and accountability
    

    View Slide

15. Initiative driven contribution - Benefits
    ● You don’t need to hunt issues 🕵
    ● Get good familiarity with certain part of core
    ● Gain attention in the community 👀
    

    View Slide

16. Writing PHPUnit test cases 🧪
    ● Write test cases for the bugs and issues
    ● Follow “Needs tests” tag
    

    View Slide

17. Testing and QA contributions ♿🧪
    ● Follow the issue testing guide
    ● Accessibility testing
    ○ Join #accessibility slack channel
    ○ Be a part of the meetings and provide good inputs
    ● Don’t RTBC any issue after testing it
    ○ It might need code review as well. Just keep that in needs review
    

    View Slide

18. Documentation Contributions 📄📃
    ● Review module guides and contribute to documentation
    ● Join #documentation channel on Drupal slack.
    ● You can be the maintainer of certain documentation guides.
    

    View Slide

19. Event contributions 📦✈
    ● Event planner or organiser
    ● Drupal Camp organiser
    ● Drupal Meetup organiser
    ● Be a part of session selection committees
    

    View Slide

20. Marketing contributions 🌏📈👕
    ● Collaborate with other marketing teams globally
    ● Work on “Promote Drupal” initiative
    ● Design Drupal swag
    ● Develop marketing material and share with community
    

    View Slide

21. A quick recap.
    

    View Slide

22. Do’s and Don’ts
    ✅
    ● Use your time wisely
    ● Do focused contributions
    ● Find your niche and leverage that
    ● Get into habit of contribution
    ● Write meaningful comments when you
    fix something
    ● Follow issue etiquettes guidelines
    ● Collaborate and communicate
    ❌
    ● Don’t do spammy contributions
    ● Stay away from PHPCs focussed
    contributions
    ● Avoid unnecessary re-rolls
    ● Avoid minor patches like info.yml
    changes
    ● Don’t write comments using
    ChatGPT(seriously??)
    ● Avoid random re-post of earlier patch
    ● Don’t upload the screenshot of applied
    patches
    

    View Slide

23. Questions?
    Twitter @mohit-rocks
    Slack mohit_aghera on Drupal Slack
    

    View Slide

24. Other links and documentation
    ● https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/docs/marketplace/abuse-of-the-contribution-credit-syst
    em About abuse of contribution credit system
    ● https://www.drupal.org/docs/develop/issues/issue-procedures-and-etiquette/issue-etique
    tte Issue etiquetes
    ● https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/docs/marketplace/services-listing#s-standards-of-cond
    uct-once-listed Avoid credit farming
    ● https://www.drupal.org/community/contributor-guide/contribution-areas
    ● https://www.previousnext.com.au/blog/5-simple-tips-increase-your-drupal-contributions-
    without-gaming-system
    ● https://opensource.com/article/23/3/positive-communication-open-source
    

    View Slide