The document discusses community anti-patterns within open-source projects, highlighting symptoms such as vague progress reports and over-commitment by members. It identifies causes related to commitment and control issues, suggesting treatments like implementing deadlines and defining resource access policies to improve community engagement. The overall goal is to foster a friendly environment for collaboration and creativity while acknowledging the emotional dynamics within communities.

1. Community
Anti-patterns
Dave Neary
SDN/NFV Community Strategy
Red Hat
dneary@redhat.com
@nearyd

4. “Good artists copy, great artists steal”
Pablo Picasso

5. Cargo cults

7. Community anti-patterns:
Best Practices Run Amok

8. Cookie licker

9. Symptoms
● Community member volunteers for tasks
● Progress reports are infrequent & vague
● “I'm working on a draft”
● “It's nearly ready to go”
● When it's suggested someone takes over, the
task owner resists
● “I'll make time next week”
● “I've almost finished”

11. Causes
● Desire to have things done well
● Best community members always over-commit
● Truly believes they can make time
● Once committed, handing off task is admitting
failure

12. Treatment
● Set deadlines on tasks, and reassign when they
run over
● Make failure OK

13. Headless chicken

15. Bikeshed

17. Mob rule

19. Alpha
Male

20. Command and Control

21. Symptoms
● Joint Copyright Assignment
● All committers from one company
● No public roadmap, unannounced features
arrive regularly

22. Justification
● Have a company to run
● We need to own the code for our business
model
● The company paid for it, we should be
special
● Community contributions are small
anyway

23. Treatment
● Define policies for community access to project
resources
● Public roadmap process
● Exchange influence for control

24. Smoke
Filled
Rooms

25. The
Water
Cooler

26. “Shy
Developers
Syndrome”

27. Fear of
community

28. Avoid the Big Reveal
Surprise is the opposite of engagement
John Lilly, Mozilla

29. Work in a glasshouse

30. Culture of
Doing

31. Open Design
!=
Design by Committee

32. Broken window

33. Symptoms
● Off-topic/bikeshed threads on mailing list
● Wiki vandalism/decreased article quality
● IRC Signal to Noise ratio decreases

34. Treatment
● Document Best Practices
● Remind offenders early
● Spread policing load around

35. Final thought:
Communities are emotional places

40. Community goal:
Create a fun, friendly environment
where people feel safe sharing

41. Thank you!
Dave Neary / @nearyd
dneary@redhat.com