[SciPy-Dev] What we do struggle with is lack of progress on

[Robert Lucente - Pipeline.Com]

> Perhaps we could put some bounds around unacceptable, good enough and 
> perfection? I realize that it is hard to put words to this. Perhaps an 
> example to kick off a conversation?

It's a tricky balance.  My feeling is that a person should lower the barrier
to contribution as much as possible: avoid unnecessary technical challenges
like git rebasing, push to PRs to guide new contributors, and provide good
documentation.

That said, I think it's better to educate than to adjust standards.
RL: Cool. The above corresponds to my personal bias. However, I was not sure
what the appropriate tribal norms were.

Experience has taught that introducing code of insufficient quality into the
code base inevitably leads to headaches later on (we all have a lot of
hypothetical time to fix things up in the future, right?).
RL: Sorry for the repetition - Cool. The above corresponds to my personal
bias. However, I was not sure what the appropriate tribal norms were.

> Perhaps people could volunteer to just help someone w/ the SciPy 
> workflow?

This is an excellent suggestion, and one we've also been considering for
scikit-image.  The idea of having existing developers acting as mentors is
often what happens informally, but it may be helpful to establish more
obvious ways for that to take place.  Do you have any thoughts on how this
could look?
RL: The following steps might seem obvious but let me state them just in
case

1) After establishing that person x has the background and code for topic y;
someone volunteers to help them w/ the SciPy workflow.

2) The 2 individuals agree to the level of help. It will vary from pair to
pair. Nothing formal is required. However, there should be an informal email
or some other written doco stating the level of help. It is just amazing
what happens when have to write something down.

I know there have been several presentations on the workflow, Jamie Frio did
a couple. 
It might useful to see if anyone has made video's of a tutorial like that so
we could put it up 
on youtube or some other place. Maybe NumFocus could have a youtube channel
with such resources.

RL: When I go to http://scikit-learn.org/stable/documentation.html, I see 2
sections

1) Development: Information on how to contribute. This also contains useful
information for advanced users, for example how to build their own
estimators.

2) FAQ: Frequently asked questions about the project and contributing.

Q: Would you guys consider have a section titled something like
"Contributing"?

This way, if someone is interested in contributing, they only have to look
in 1 place. In this 1 place we could add presentations and YouTube videos.

I will gladly help w/ this if there is interest.