Community Interactions¶

Community members are the single most important resource available to Plasma Group. With such a small set of core contributors, we can only hope to create the best possible plasma implementation by tapping into our community. Remember, we cannot succeed without the support of our community.

In the words of Eric Raymond:

If you treat your beta-testers as if they’re your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.

It’s extremely important that we keep this fact in mind during each and every interaction with a community member, on- or offline.

General Guidelines¶

  1. Treat all contributors with respect.

Our contributors are taking time out of their busy days to help us make plasma a reality. That alone deserves a lot of respect! Our contributors are also real people with real lives. Plasma Group core contributors should treat all outside contributors with the same respect they show each other.

  1. Always thank contributors.

Whether it’s help with a bug report, feature request, or pull request, our contributors make a huge dent in the amount of work placed on the core team. Thank contributors for their help! It’s nice and it’s the right thing to do, but it’s also important to make contributors feel appreciated. Most of the people helping us aren’t doing it for the money, and they definitely don’t want to receive a harsh response for trying to help.

Even if a user has submitted something like a duplicate issue, thank them for their assistance! They’ll feel like they can help out without judgement.

  1. Show contributors that their contributions are making a difference.

Contributors want to make a difference, and it’s important that their impact is acknowledged. Again, always thank contributors for their help. Feel free to reach out to contributors privately and thank them for their contributions, especially after big releases.

Another great way to thank contributors for their work is to send GitCoin Kudos. Kudos are special ERC-721s that you can send to users via their GitHub usernames!

  1. Help contributors get involved.

This might be the most important rule of them all. Always be focused on helping contributors get involved. Whether that’s by Tweeting out GitHub issues, linking users to documentation, or writing better issues, your number one focus should be to build out the community of contributors.