1:03 p.m.
Hey everyone, just a few thoughts on this (I’ll open up another one for the interview
stories)
As now the requirement to have the SME pass as a part (the first part even) of the
Editorial process it would be great to define for both the contributor and the team the
responsibilities of nominating, acquiring and assisting said SMEs.
Perhaps it would be beneficial to draft out guidelines on the individual steps including
how to obtain, facilitate with the author, sign off, and retain their assistance for
future chapters if possible. I would assume a SME in one area could also be a SME in
another.
Granted, getting some SMEs will be more difficult than others (especially if they are from
a different industry e.g. medical) but generally the process should follow the same flow.
I will also admit that I have not pursued a SME before, and those with more experience in
doing so your insight would be extremely appreciated.
I drafted up a few ideas into the initial “stages” as I dn’t want to get too ahead of
myself.
Nominations:
• Authors would be able to nominate multiple SMEs as part of their contribution. This
is with the assumption they have conducted research and are aware of SMEs in that
particular subject. However, it should be noted that this isn’t a requirement for the
following reasons: we don’t want to raise the on-boarding higher for authors; the subject
could be outside their industry; they could be the only SME themselves or don’t know
enough SMEs to identify a preferable one.
• If an author does suggest SME(s) they also provide references or other form of
verification of knowledge/expertise. Link to their talks, books, articles, etc.
• If there is no SME nominated then it would fall to the TOSW (The Open Source Way)
team to source this (I would expect)
◦ Would this be who ever is assigned as editorial team picking up that
PR/chapter?
◦ Would be good to have a label “Needs SME” so everyone could chip in and make
suggestions
◦ Would also be good to have a list of proposed SMEs for different sections.
Additions made to this list can be ad hock “Oh I just watched this great talk from so-so
and they demonstrated a lot of knowledge in X, I’ll add it to the nomination list”. We can
use this list to when we come across chapters with the “Needs SME” label and see if
someone has already been nominated on that particular topic. We eventually could identify
the status of that nominee if they participated, not been asked or other when we start
getting more content.
• If there are multiple SMEs requested for the same chapter I would think that by
approaching them all would help increase the chances of them accepting. If they accepted
but the chapter was allocated to another SME, we should encourage them to be an SME or an
author in another chapter. Hopefully they would be interested to do so.
Would be nice to have a informal canned response to asking a potential SME to
participate.
• If there is a conflict about the most appropriate SME (doubt this will happen) then
the TOSW would collectively agree on the appropriate SME on the PR itself?
Acquiring SMEs:
• Who’s responsibility is it when an author has submitted a contribution and a SME is
required. Who to reach out to the nominated SME?
◦ I would think it would be TOSW team’s responsibility
◦ Unless the author has stated they have a line of communication to the nominated
SME. Would the TOSW team assist?
• We could fall into the chicken & egg scenario where a SME could be ‘anyone’ in a
particular field. This is relevant to those chapters that may overlap other industries
like medical so a nominated SME could simply be “a professional in that area”. This would
mean that a SME could be acquired prior to a signed off nomination.
• Note here, I assume that TOSW would perhaps have more leverage to request for
assistance from potential SMEs due to the proportion of RedHat employees on the team and
thus have a larger pool or SMEs to request internally.
• Should we have timelines to give SMEs?
◦ We should have a label indicating that the chapter is being “SME reviewing” or
something similar or would its position on the project board be enough?
• What will the on-boarding of an SME look like? Would they be credited, how?
• How would the SME and author communicate. Ideally it would be via the GitHub repo
but that in itself has a learning curve and we can’t assume SME will learn the tool. What
would be the most simplest alternative? Email, private calls? Who’s responsibility is it
to arrange these?
◦ My immediate thought would be the editorial team member assigned the chapter
would start the interaction between the two and only nudge the author and SME for an
update occasional… But ultimately the author would be responsible for the actual
sessions/communication.
◦ We may have to draft up a simple process for those to raise issues regarding to
the author/SME interactions to the assigned editorial team member (or TOSW editorial
team). Things like, clash of ideas, lack of response etc.
• Once the author and SME are happy with the review they would indicate this on the PR
itself.. Perhaps a label “SME passed”. The chapter would then proceed to the next pass.
So OK, those my initial thoughts.
My biggest drive to thinking about this is entirely selfish (haha) for the self-care
chapter and obtaining an appropriate SME. I feel I could help with acquiring a SME (a
medical or mental health practitioner) but wanted to see if that is going beyond the
responsibilities and/or there just needs to be an alignment and communication on who is
connecting who :)
- Ashley