A few years ago we undertook an effort to capture “contributions” to CiviCRM via a contributor log. As you can imagine, this was and is an imperfect attempt to capture information on who is doing what and when. It’s a difficult task given that community members support CiviCRM in many different ways and through many different channels, including Gitlab, MatterMost, and Stack Exchange to name a few.
Nonetheless, the contributor log formed as a way for individuals to “log their time (effort)”. While doing so is completely voluntary, we did at that time tie contributions into the display at https://civicrm.org/partners-contributors, thereby making them influence rankings as well as add contributors only (non-partners) to the display. Again, it’s not perfect, but response has generally been positive.
The contributor log itself is a form on civicrm.org. It requires individuals to log their time and details. And, honestly, it’s got some fail points. For one, it can be a burden or easily forgotten. Likewise, it’s difficult to assess the “value” of what contributors do add to the log. Finally, it’s a closed system… contributions are not really visible to the public. But these fail points are about to change.
On August 1st, the contributor log as it stands will be replaced by time tracking in Gitlab. That’s right, no more form on civicrm.org to log contributor details. All you have to do is add a simple command in Gitlab and you’re finished.
For the basics of time tracking (and they’re really simple) go here. For some ongoing discussion, check out this thread.
As a reminder, recording time is completely voluntary. While it helps us understand the variety of ways that people contribute as well as the effort that they put in, it’s in no way a requirement. For our part, we’d like to excel at recognizing our incredible community of supporters, so tracking contributions helps provide us with visibility to do just that.
