Sustainability and EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) in the R Project
Heather Turner and Ella Kaye
University of Warwick
April 22, 2023
Presentation details
slides: https://satrday-sustain-r.netlify.app/
repo: https://github.com/EllaKaye/sustain-R
mastodon: @R_contributors@hachyderm.io
twitter: @R_contributors
Sustainability
Those who contributed the most to R early on are now near the end of their careers, only partially replaced by new contributors.
Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI)
Diversity among maintainers of R packages on the CRAN repository
Data source: Pinto et al. 2018, DOI: 10.1109/SANER.2018.8330263
Benefits of a diverse community
- Increasing innovation
- Increasing sustainability
- Decreased duplication of effort as people work together
Personal reflection
- A diverse, welcoming community is pleasurable to be involved in (as opposed to off-putting)
- Motivates a desire to contribute.
Initiatives
Building a diverse contributor community
R Contribution Working Group est. July 2020
- Social media (Slack, Twitter, Mastodon)
- Novice-friendly documentation
- Short-term paid projects (GSoC, GSoD)
- Events for novice contributors
Prioritising engagement with people from under-represented groups
bugs
translations
Event: Collaboration Campfires
- Series of four 90-minute sessions introducing ways to contribute
- Informal, exploratory, interactive
- Targeted outreach to people from underrepresented groups
Campfire Topic: Bug Handling
- Exploring R’s Bugzilla
- Reviewing bugs
Campfire Topic: Localisation/translation
- Exploring status of translations
- Contributing translations
Related project: Translation Dashboard
https://contributor.r-project.org/translations
Screenshot of top of R Translations Status Dashboard
Infrastructure: R Development Guide
https://contributor.r-project.org/rdevguide/
- Novice-friendly
- Initial focus on established workflows for bugs & translations
- Recent/ongoing:
- Further topics
- Alternative workflows
Infrastructure: Weblate
- Set up summer 2022 by Gergely Daróczi
- Web interface makes it easy to work on translations for R
- Incorporated into base R
- Poster, blog post
Event: Bug BBQ
- Global, online, 24-hour event to work on open bugs.
- ~20 participants, new and experienced - a good range
- Good for collaboration, learning experience
- 22 bugs identified for event
- 9 not addressed, 3 unresolved, 10 fixed or almost fixed
- Good progress on bugs and prompt to act
- Full report
Event: Translatón/hackaton
- LatinR, Oct 2022
- 10 participants ~500 translations
- Brazilian-Portuguese and Spanish
- Connect people with experience in translation to first-timers
- Plan for similar AsiaR hackathon
Event: R Project Sprint 2023
- Collaborate on contributions to base R
- ~50 participants, range of experience
- A diverse group
- Several have engaged with past RCWG events and initiatives
- Taking place at The University of Warwick, Aug 30–Sept 1st 2023
- https://contributor.r-project.org/r-project-sprint-2023/
- Will report after the event
Get involved
Slack and Meetup
https://contributor.r-project.org/slack
https://www.meetup.com/r-contributors/
The Slack is a supportive space to foster the community of contributors to R core development:
- Potential/novice contributors wanting support to get started/develop as contributors.
- Experienced contributors and members of R Core willing to provide ad-hoc support.
- Community organizers wanting to connect their communities with this initiative.
R Contribution Office Hours
- Monthly, 2nd Thursday (next two are May 11th, June 8th)
- Two time-zones (10am and 5:30pm UTC)
- Informal opportunity to work on any aspect of contributing to R
- Has led to bug fixes
C book club for R contributors
- For existing/aspiring R contributors that want to learn/refresh their C programming skills.
- May 16th–Aug 22nd, online every two weeks, 1-2pm BST Tuesdays
- Main reading is Modern C by Jens Gustedt, supplemented by selected exercises from C Programming: A Modern Approach by K. N. King.
- Commitment ~2hrs a week
- https://github.com/r-devel/c-book-club/
https://contributor.r-project.org
Sustainability and EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) in the R Project Heather Turner and Ella Kaye University of Warwick April 22, 2023