Hello @community,
As we continue streamlining and re-shaping our community, I want to put some long-standing community pain points on the table so we can have a proper discussion and come out with real decisions.
These are issues that affect everyone, from people trying to join the community for the first time, to active contributors trying to collaborate. If you are facing something I have not covered here, I would like us to keep the conversation going. The goal is to surface everything and plan how to go about them.
1. The wiki is not truly community-managed
Every time a contributor wants to edit the wiki, they first have to request edit permissions from the admin. That creates a bottleneck and discourages people from contributing to documentation. We need to decide: how do we enable open contribution while maintaining structure?
2. Joining our Slack has too much friction
There is no public invite link. To join, you have to submit your email and wait for an admin to add you manually. New contributors should not have to go through all that just to join the conversation. We need to decide: do we introduce a self-serve invite, or rethink our communication channel entirely?
3. Two issue trackers, no clear decision
Community issues are currently spread across Jira (which is mainly an itech/digi tool) and GitHub Issues. This creates confusion about where to file things, where to look for work, and how to track progress.We need a clear decision on a single, community-facing system.
4. No policy on stale PRs and issue ownership
We have no agreed answers to these questions:
- How long before a PR is marked stale or auto-closed if there is no activity?
- How long should someone have to work on an issue before it gets unassigned?
- How many issues should one person be allowed to hold at a time?
Without clear norms, PRs go unreviewed, issues get stuck, and contributors end up blocking each other without realising it. We need to document and agree on some defaults.
5. Growing our contributor base
The community needs more active contributors. Fixing the friction points above will help, but we also need a proper onboarding path, good first issues, a welcome process, and clear docs on how to get started. Contributors who feel lost in week one usually do not come back.
If you are facing something I have not listed here, lets the conversation flowing. No issue is too small, if it is slowing you down or making it harder to contribute, it belongs in this conversation.