We aren't going to do this now. For the time being we'll hope that the intrinsic desirability of good registry info will motivate people to provide it. We continue to wait for a good replacement for karma.
Registry Karma
Award karma to users who provide information that help other communities.
As a project contributor
I want earn karma for working in the registry
so that I receive recognition for actions that benefit others
IRC, bug reports, questions (and the entire answers application) show that karma is a strong motivator for crowd sourcing.
Rationale
There are several registry features that failed to encourage users to provide the information needed by communities:
- Source package pages asked users to link them to projects.
- Users can create releases, but are not encouraged to upload the tarball.
- Project pages and listing show "Unspecified license"
These features had several common flaws. They did not explain how to complete the task, the value to other communities, nor the value to the user performing the task.
This is in contrast to a question that encourages users to provide an answer, to subscribe to a project to help others, to earn karma. Bugs and Translations also encourage users to write comments/messages, update statues, and earn karma.
The list of items that need to be done to connect Ubuntu to upstream are all items that users could do if Launchpad provided both a means to show the problem, and a reward for solving it:
- Upload a release tarball
- Link a package to a project
- Link a branch to a series
- Enable translations syncing with a branch.
- Link a bug tracker to a project
By awarding karma for each of these actions, we are encouraging users to provide better links between Ubuntu and upstreams.
Stakeholders
Ubuntu contributors and Launchpad users who work with many projects are the primary stakeholders. The users want to connect their community to another communities to share information. e.g.
- MOTUs
- Ubuntu bug squad
- translators
- release managers
The project's core community is not a stakeholder. There are bug reports that suggest the core community get karma for working in their project, but actions that only help one community have little value.
XXX - find actual end users who you can talk to about this
Constraints
Reward users who provide information or data that lowers the barrier for other communities to contribute to a project.
Do not reward users for helping themselves, or for registering something that does not exist.
Do not reward users for entering false or misleading data.
Subfeatures
Adding Registry Events is the preferred way of implementing registry karma. Most, maybe all, karma-recording features work by subscribing to object creation and modification events. The registry does not publish events. Other services, such as structural subscriptions can subscribe to the events.
Workflows
No workflows. Karma is a secondary event tied to existing workflows.
Success
We will know we are done when the creation and modification events of core registry objects have karma subscribers. This list is based on examples from karma in other applications:
- Tier 4: valuable to end users and many communities, 10 karma.
- A user uploaded a project release file.
- A user linked a source package to an upstream project series.
- A user linked a branch to a project series.
- A user linked an external bug tracker to a project.
- A user enabled translations syncing for a project series.
- A user registered a project release.
- A user registered a distribution mirror.
- A user made a project announcement.
- A user registered a team poll.
- A user registered a project.
- A user registered a series.
- A user registered a milestone.
- A user registered a team.
- A user registered a mailing list.
An increase in the trend of "end user" and "other community" counts in the database is a moderate success. Seeing the emergence of a group of users who specialise in providing this information for many projects indicates a great success. e.g., I can see that Jelmer is a leader in linking packages to projects. Answers is an example of an application where users specialise in package or problem to help users.
The desired end result is better linking between upstream projects and Ubuntu. We expect to see an improved trend in https://lpstats.canonical.com/graphs/PackagesWithUpstreamBranchesMain/ and https://lpstats.canonical.com/graphs/TableRowCountpackaging/
Release Note
Launchpad now awards karma for connecting communities to projects. When you provide information that helps users contribute to a project or link parts of the project to other projects, Launchpad awards you karma. Actions like linking a project to an Ubuntu source package, providing bug tracker information, or enabling translations syncing with a branch make it easier for communities to share knowledge and work. Launchpad rewards users who help the global Launchpad community.
Thoughts?
A user who asks a question will not have more karma than the project owner if the owner provides the information that allows other to contribute.