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

https://bugs.r-project.org

  • Exploring R’s Bugzilla
  • Reviewing bugs

Campfire Topic: Localisation/translation

  • Exploring status of translations
  • Contributing translations

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

https://translate.rx.studio

Screenshot from Weblate

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

This image was created by Sciberia for The Turing Way community and is used under CC-BY license.

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

https://contributor.r-project.org