Promote trusted contributors to maintainers in collections

Project Discussions Collection Development
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Hi there,

In our collections, as in any open-source project, contributors and maintainers come and go.
When the last active maintainer steps away, a project risks stagnation and abandonment.
Even if contributors continue submitting fixes and improvements, no one may be available to review and merge their efforts, leading to a decline in activity and contributors’ exodus.

To prevent this, there are proactive steps you can take to keep your collections healthy and thriving.

What you can do as a maintainer

If you are a community collection maintainer and there are other regularly-active, trusted contributors in the collection consider promoting them to maintainers:

  • Reach out to them and discuss the possibility of promotion.

  • Share the Guidelines for collection maintainers so they understand the maintainer responsibilities, including:

    • Keeping CI up to date and “green”.
    • Following your project’s versioning conventions.
    • Managing collection releases.

  • If they’re interested, update their permissions to write.

  • If your collection is hosted under the ansible-collections GitHub org and you lack admin access to adjust the permissions, please reach out to the Ansible community engineering team on the forum for assistance.

Enchance communication and awareness:

  • Check your README and update it by adding the communication, contributing and maintenance sections if missed; use the collection_template/README.md as a basis.
  • Create a pinned issue in the collection stating explicitly that new contributors and maintainers are welcome.

What you can do as a contributor

If you contribute to a collection within the ansible-collections GitHub org but there are no active maintainers to review and merge your pull request, or you’re interested in becoming a maintainer, reach out the Ansible community engineering team on the forum for assistance.

Let’s ensure our collections remained vibrant and well-maintained!

If you have any feedback or suggestions, please share them in the comments.

Thanks for reading:)

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