Proposal for Tangible Contributor Recognition Awards under Fedora Mindshare Recognition Service

gridhead commented

2026-01-08 08:39:35 +00:00

(Migrated from gitlab.com)

This is a follow-up to the discussion we had during the last Fedora Mindshare fortnightly meeting of the year 2025. Not to be confused with the Fedora Contributor Recognition Awards programme, which the Fedora Mentor Summit organisers run specifically for the mentoring aspect of the Fedora Project community, this one is for the activities that contributed to the Fedora Linux releases. These tasks might include, but are not limited to, development, testing, maintenance, documentation, designing, facilitation, etc.

The purpose of these awards is to provide recognition to the budding contributors who played an exemplary role during a certain release cycle, regardless of what category that role belongs to. Also, the focus is decidedly specific towards budding contributors (either newcomers or returners to the community) and not towards the regulars who have been contributing to the project for a while now, to ensure that we provide them with incentives to continue contributing or, in other cases, increase involvement.

This restriction would be exercised with the use of an artificially introduced cooldown period of two release cycles (i.e. approximately one year period). A certain winner from a Fedora Linux XX release cycle cannot be nominated again until the Fedora Linux XX+2 release cycle to be one of the winners. Also, the slope of increasing favourable contributing activities (using unbiased, agreed-upon contributor metrics) would be utilised to shortlist (and finally select) the folks who would be awarded the said title and prize.

We would be limiting the number of winners per release cycle to a certain number, like ten or twelve, to ensure that the quality of the prizes does not dwindle. Apart from the swagpack that would be sent to the winners, they would also be awarded a badge that is specific to that Fedora Linux release cycle, which recognises their efforts during the same. The shortlisted winners will be contacted for their correspondence details for the delivery of the swagpack, and a blog post will be published to appreciate their actions.

I also want to include the agency of declination of the prizes in the mix, should a certain repeating winner not want to receive them, or simply put, a declination of the nomination itself, to make way for fellow budding contributors. While not asked explicitly, the same would be assumed, so should the connection for the correspondence not get replied to within a certain period around the said Fedora Linux release party. Should that were to happen, the next person on the waitlist would automatically make it into the nomination.

This is the plan from a 10k ft view and would require a lot of details around areas like shortlisting criteria, average price of the swagpack, designing of the badges, publishing of this information, documenting the events processes, etc. and hence, I would require your help with this. Please feel free to ask questions or, heck, suggest changes to the plan I have proposed. There have been some assumptions made while drafting this overall summary, and I would like to use your feedback to tailor the changes to make things work.

Long read, I know.

This is a follow-up to the discussion we had during the last Fedora Mindshare fortnightly meeting of the year 2025. Not to be confused with the Fedora Contributor Recognition Awards programme, which the Fedora Mentor Summit organisers run specifically for the mentoring aspect of the Fedora Project community, this one is for the activities that contributed to the Fedora Linux releases. These tasks might include, but are not limited to, development, testing, maintenance, documentation, designing, facilitation, etc. The purpose of these awards is to provide recognition to the budding contributors who played an exemplary role during a certain release cycle, regardless of what category that role belongs to. Also, the focus is decidedly specific towards budding contributors (either newcomers or returners to the community) and not towards the regulars who have been contributing to the project for a while now, to ensure that we provide them with incentives to continue contributing or, in other cases, increase involvement. This restriction would be exercised with the use of an artificially introduced cooldown period of two release cycles (i.e. approximately one year period). A certain winner from a Fedora Linux XX release cycle cannot be nominated again until the Fedora Linux XX+2 release cycle to be one of the winners. Also, the slope of increasing favourable contributing activities (using unbiased, agreed-upon contributor metrics) would be utilised to shortlist (and finally select) the folks who would be awarded the said title and prize. We would be limiting the number of winners per release cycle to a certain number, like ten or twelve, to ensure that the quality of the prizes does not dwindle. Apart from the swagpack that would be sent to the winners, they would also be awarded a badge that is specific to that Fedora Linux release cycle, which recognises their efforts during the same. The shortlisted winners will be contacted for their correspondence details for the delivery of the swagpack, and a blog post will be published to appreciate their actions. I also want to include the agency of declination of the prizes in the mix, should a certain repeating winner not want to receive them, or simply put, a declination of the nomination itself, to make way for fellow budding contributors. While not asked explicitly, the same would be assumed, so should the connection for the correspondence not get replied to within a certain period around the said Fedora Linux release party. Should that were to happen, the next person on the waitlist would automatically make it into the nomination. This is the plan from a 10k ft view and would require a lot of details around areas like shortlisting criteria, average price of the swagpack, designing of the badges, publishing of this information, documenting the events processes, etc. and hence, I would require your help with this. Please feel free to ask questions or, heck, suggest changes to the plan I have proposed. There have been some assumptions made while drafting this overall summary, and I would like to use your feedback to tailor the changes to make things work. Long read, I know.

gridhead commented

2026-01-08 08:39:35 +00:00

(Migrated from gitlab.com)

set status to To do

set status to **To do**

gridhead commented

2026-01-08 08:39:36 +00:00

(Migrated from gitlab.com)

assigned to @gridhead

gridhead commented

2026-01-08 08:45:16 +00:00

(Migrated from gitlab.com)

mentioned in issue #88

theprogram commented

2026-01-08 09:05:23 +00:00

(Migrated from gitlab.com)

10 or 12 new contributors recognised in such a way would cover most new contributors! This is actually great, because I'm not a huge fan of 'prizes'. I hated those times in school when a house captain or the same 'high performing' persons would always get groomed.. Maybe SIGs could nominate their new members who have contributed? Maybe with the actual numbers of new contributors coming in (which I would estimate at under 12 per cycle), all new contributors could recieve a 'welcome and recognition pack'?

justwheel commented

2026-01-08 18:32:09 +00:00

(Migrated from gitlab.com)

assigned to @gwmngilfen

gridhead commented

2026-01-09 04:59:23 +00:00

(Migrated from gitlab.com)

Yep, the crux here is to award the budding contributors with some tangible encouragement so they feel recognised for the work they put in and are incentivised to do more of what they are good at. It does not make sense to award those who have been around for a long time, not because we do not appreciate what they do, but because there is comparatively little value there to derive on both ends (i.e. Fedora Project as a community and them as an individual). When I was drafting the proposal, I was thinking of going with objectively calculated contributor metrics and that way, our biases do not favour those who may appear to be active and against those who silently chip away at a task. But I am curious about your thoughts on SIG nominations too, because we do something like that in the Fedora Mentor Summit's counterpart of this programme (and that went great too, even if I say so myself as being one of the organisers there) - please detail more if you can to have something to work on.

Also, I am averse to limiting ourselves to just new contributors. The key point here is to award budding ones, i.e. those who have had an increase in their activity over a certain period, to ensure that they understand that their efforts are being appreciated. Let me give you an example from @gwmngilfen's project on contributor metrics - if you look at the table under the "Top Contributors Orbit Plot", you would realise that even though I have a score of 372.0, I am still ranking beneath a couple of entries. It is because my activities have remained more or less the same throughout the period this evaluation is accounting for, and hence, the ranking values those contribute more than the last period (which could be a month, a week, etc., as long as it is under the duration of a Fedora Linux release cycle). So even if these are participants that are coming back to Fedora Project after a long spell of absence, as long as they are actively participating again, we will have something to appreciate them with ;P

Yep, the crux here is to award the budding contributors with some tangible encouragement so they feel recognised for the work they put in and are incentivised to do more of what they are good at. It does not make sense to award those who have been around for a long time, not because we do not appreciate what they do, but because there is comparatively little value there to derive on both ends (i.e. Fedora Project as a community and them as an individual). When I was drafting the proposal, I was thinking of going with objectively calculated contributor metrics and that way, our biases do not favour those who may appear to be active and against those who silently chip away at a task. But I am curious about your thoughts on SIG nominations too, because we do something like that in the Fedora Mentor Summit's counterpart of this programme (and that went great too, even if I say so myself as being one of the organisers there) - please detail more if you can to have something to work on. Also, I am averse to limiting ourselves to just new contributors. The key point here is to award budding ones, i.e. those who have had an increase in their activity over a certain period, to ensure that they understand that their efforts are being appreciated. Let me give you an example from @gwmngilfen's project on [contributor metrics](https://gwmngilfen.fedorapeople.org/contributors/reports/All.html) - if you look at the table under the "Top Contributors Orbit Plot", you would realise that even though I have a score of 372.0, I am still ranking beneath a couple of entries. It is because my activities have remained more or less the same throughout the period this evaluation is accounting for, and hence, the ranking values those contribute more than the last period (which could be a month, a week, etc., as long as it is under the duration of a Fedora Linux release cycle). So even if these are participants that are coming back to Fedora Project after a long spell of absence, as long as they are actively participating again, we will have something to appreciate them with ;P

theprogram commented

2026-01-09 08:22:06 +00:00

(Migrated from gitlab.com)

What data is used to compile the contributor metrics chart?
What counts as activity?
With also using SIG nominations, we can find the people the metrics system misses.

Re 'new' contributors, I'm totally with you. The goal is to recognise people that have not yet been recognised.

With the say 10-12 nominations per cycle, I think there is space for recognition for everyone over the next two years.

Or we could give recognition packs in a big one off splurge to catch up, and then do 10 per cycle.

Cheers,
Mat H

...

On 9 January 2026 4:59:25 am UTC, "Akashdeep Dhar (@gridhead)" gitlab@mg.gitlab.com wrote:

Akashdeep Dhar commented on a discussion: https://gitlab.com/fedora/mindshare/home/-/issues/96#note_2993372008

Yep, the crux here is to award the budding contributors with some tangible encouragement so they feel recognised for the work they put in and are incentivised to do more of what they are good at. It does not make sense to award those who have been around for a long time, not because we do not appreciate what they do, but because there is comparatively little value there to derive on both ends (i.e. Fedora Project as a community and them as an individual). When I was drafting the proposal, I was thinking of going with objectively calculated contributor metrics and that way, our biases do not favour those who may appear to be active and against those who silently chip away at a task. But I am curious about your thoughts on SIG nominations too, because we do something like that in the Fedora Mentor Summit's counterpart of this programme (and that went great too, even if I say so myself as being one of the organisers there) - please detail more if you can to have something to work on.

Also, I am averse to limiting ourselves to just new contributors. The key point here is to award budding ones, i.e. those who have had an increase in their activity over a certain period, to ensure that they understand that their efforts are being appreciated. Let me give you an example from @gwmngilfen's project on contributor metrics - if you look at the table under the "Top Contributors Orbit Plot", you would realise that even though I have a score of 372.0, I am still ranking beneath a couple of entries. It is because my activities have remained more or less the same throughout the period this evaluation is accounting for, and hence, the ranking values those contribute more than the last period (which could be a month, a week, etc., as long as it is under the duration of a Fedora Linux release cycle). So even if these are participants that are coming back to Fedora Project after a long spell of absence, as long as they are actively participating again, we will have something to appreciate them with ;P

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitLab: https://gitlab.com/fedora/mindshare/home/-/issues/96#note_2993372008
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What data is used to compile the contributor metrics chart? What counts as activity? With also using SIG nominations, we can find the people the metrics system misses. Re 'new' contributors, I'm totally with you. The goal is to recognise people that have not yet been recognised. With the say 10-12 nominations per cycle, I think there is space for recognition for everyone over the next two years. Or we could give recognition packs in a big one off splurge to catch up, and then do 10 per cycle. Cheers, Mat H <details><summary>...</summary> On 9 January 2026 4:59:25 am UTC, "Akashdeep Dhar (@gridhead)" <gitlab@mg.gitlab.com> wrote: > > > >Akashdeep Dhar commented on a discussion: https://gitlab.com/fedora/mindshare/home/-/issues/96#note_2993372008 > > >Yep, the crux here is to award the budding contributors with some tangible encouragement so they feel recognised for the work they put in and are incentivised to do more of what they are good at. It does not make sense to award those who have been around for a long time, not because we do not appreciate what they do, but because there is comparatively little value there to derive on both ends (i.e. Fedora Project as a community and them as an individual). When I was drafting the proposal, I was thinking of going with objectively calculated contributor metrics and that way, our biases do not favour those who may appear to be active and against those who silently chip away at a task. But I am curious about your thoughts on SIG nominations too, because we do something like that in the Fedora Mentor Summit's counterpart of this programme (and that went great too, even if I say so myself as being one of the organisers there) - please detail more if you can to have something to work on. > >Also, I am averse to limiting ourselves to just new contributors. The key point here is to award budding ones, i.e. those who have had an increase in their activity over a certain period, to ensure that they understand that their efforts are being appreciated. Let me give you an example from @gwmngilfen's project on [contributor metrics](https://gwmngilfen.fedorapeople.org/contributors/reports/All.html) - if you look at the table under the "Top Contributors Orbit Plot", you would realise that even though I have a score of 372.0, I am still ranking beneath a couple of entries. It is because my activities have remained more or less the same throughout the period this evaluation is accounting for, and hence, the ranking values those contribute more than the last period (which could be a month, a week, etc., as long as it is under the duration of a Fedora Linux release cycle). So even if these are participants that are coming back to Fedora Project after a long spell of absence, as long as they are actively participating again, we will have something to appreciate them with ;P > >-- >Reply to this email directly or view it on GitLab: https://gitlab.com/fedora/mindshare/home/-/issues/96#note_2993372008 >You're receiving this email because of your account on gitlab.com. > > </details>

gridhead commented

2026-01-09 11:45:44 +00:00

(Migrated from gitlab.com)

What data is used to compile the contributor metrics chart? What counts as activity? With also using SIG nominations, we can find the people the metrics system misses.

I am going to let @gwmngilfen answer these, not because I do not have an idea about what the contributor metrics would end up looking like, but I think he would be able to do your questions justice, as he is working closely on these aspects.

> What data is used to compile the contributor metrics chart? What counts as activity? With also using SIG nominations, we can find the people the metrics system misses. I am going to let @gwmngilfen answer these, not because I do not have an idea about what the contributor metrics would end up looking like, but I think he would be able to do your questions justice, as he is working closely on these aspects.

gwmngilfen commented

2026-01-12 10:36:39 +00:00

(Migrated from gitlab.com)

So this is very up for debate, because it's all somewhat arbitrary....

In the example report if you scroll to the bottom there's a list of the values used, but the most minimal version is just three columns - a user ID, a timestamp, and an activity.

id	time	item
gwmngilfen	2025-12-07 09:45	opened pr
math	2025-11-08 11:43	discourse-post
gridhead	2025-10-08 17:32	reviewed-pr

We map the activity to a number (chosen by us, and it can be back-calculated so we can adjust as needed). We also coarsen the time to just a number of months. That gives us something like:

id	months	value
gwmngilfen	1	1.4
math	2	1.2
gridhead	3	1.8

Finally, we apply a formula of score = value * 0.9^(months) to downweight older acvitiy, which gives:

id	score
gwmngilfen	1.4
math	0.972
gridhead	1.3122

So here Akash's review is a more valuable activity (reviewing a PR) but because it was 3 months ago its now worth slightly less than my recent opening of a PR.

Sum this up (per user) over all activity types we can track, assign weights for each type, and you have the data source for this work. The example only looks at GitHub, but in Fedora we have vastly more data we could use - but it requires us to actually sit down, cut some sample data, assign some trial weights, and crunch the result. I've just not had time to do it myself, but I'd be happy wot work with others on getting there.

So this is *very* up for debate, because it's all somewhat arbitrary.... In the [example report](https://gwmngilfen.fedorapeople.org/contributors/reports/All.html) if you scroll to the bottom there's a list of the values used, but the most minimal version is just three columns - a user ID, a timestamp, and an activity. | id | time | item | | ------ | ------ | ------ | | gwmngilfen | 2025-12-07 09:45 | opened pr | | math | 2025-11-08 11:43 | discourse-post | | gridhead | 2025-10-08 17:32 | reviewed-pr | We map the activity to a number (chosen by us, and it can be back-calculated so we can adjust as needed). We also coarsen the time to just a number of months. That gives us something like: | id | months | value | | ------ | ------ | ------ | | gwmngilfen | 1 | 1.4 | | math | 2 | 1.2 | | gridhead | 3 | 1.8 | Finally, we apply a formula of `score = value * 0.9^(months)` to downweight older acvitiy, which gives: | id | score| | ------ | ------ | | gwmngilfen | 1.4 | | math | 0.972 | | gridhead | 1.3122 | So here Akash's review is a more valuable activity (reviewing a PR) but because it was 3 months ago its now worth slightly less than my recent opening of a PR. Sum this up (per user) over all activity types we can track, assign weights for each type, and you have the data source for this work. The example only looks at GitHub, but in Fedora we have *vastly* more data we could use - but it requires us to actually sit down, cut some sample data, assign some trial weights, and crunch the result. I've just not had time to do it myself, but I'd be happy wot work with others on getting there.

gwmngilfen commented

2026-01-12 10:42:23 +00:00

(Migrated from gitlab.com)

mentioned in issue #92

gwmngilfen commented

2026-01-12 10:48:54 +00:00

(Migrated from gitlab.com)

The only blocker to me trying this out, realistically is actually having a cut of the data to test it on. In theory I can get it myself (since I have sysadmin-main) but I never quite seem to find the time.

@rowright @fedora-mwinters where is the data WG at just now? Is there an easy way (or pre-existing cuts) of activity data in something like the first table above? If not I'll try to find a moment to go cut something from the raw data 😄 (but I have promised to do that at least 5 times and still not done it 😕)

The only blocker to me trying this out, realistically is actually having a cut of the data to test it on. In theory I can get it myself (since I have sysadmin-main) but I never quite seem to find the time. @rowright @fedora-mwinters where is the data WG at just now? Is there an easy way (or pre-existing cuts) of activity data in something like the first table above? If not I'll try to find a moment to go cut something from the raw data :smile: (but I have promised to do that at least 5 times and still not done it :confused:)

t0xic0der added a new dependency

2026-05-11 03:50:11 +00:00

#116 Action items for Recognition Service team from Fedora Council Strategy Summit 2026

Rows
Columns

Proposal for Tangible Contributor Recognition Awards under Fedora Mindshare Recognition Service #96