How can I improve my Certified to Rock level?
One of the first questions we are getting from folks who use the site (yay!) is "how can I increase my certification level?"
Improving your Certified to Rock certification level
Well, the answer is both simple and extremely complex...
Simple answer is just "get more involved in contributing to the Drupal project." Our goal is to measure community involvement and develop the system to provide scores to people who have contributed strongly to the community in meaningful ways that approximate how well they know the Drupal software.
So...the complex answer is one that has been covered in dozens of places, but one decent guide is contribute page on drupal.org.
Do that, and you will become even more of a RockStar.
What kinds of things are included in the system?
Lots of people want to know what's in the algorithm. We're not revealing specifics. But we do want ideas on how to improve the accuracy of our measurements and it's important to consider the impact a new metric might have on the algorithm and the Drupal community.
Here are a couple of the criteria we use when including a new metric into an algorithm.
- It must be easy to automate. There are about 500,000 people on drupal.org and more every day. We can't add something to the system that is going to require much manual work. Certainly nothing that requires us to manually do a task more than a few dozen times. So, we could make a list of everyone who organized a DrupalCon and have the algorithm system use that because that's only a few dozen people (we don't currently do that and may never). But we aren't going to go through github, launchpad, and gitorious and associate people's ID on those systems with their drupal.org user ID and then have the system give credit to people who send lots of e-mails. That's not scalable. Pro tip: keep your work on drupal.org itself - if you don't like the way it looks/functions/whatever then help the redesign.
- It must not encourage anything that is harmful to the community. This is somewhat tricky. If, for example, the system gave points to people who have a lot of projects on drupal.org then that would encourage the creation of lots of projects including a lot of really bad ones. That makes it harder for new users to find projects. Which is really bad. So, we don't use any metrics like that!
- It must be balanced. One of the things we're really trying hard to do is measure skill and knowledge of Drupal in a way that is fair to people with different skill sets. Someone who is an awesome site builder (can't code much, can't design, but really can choose modules and configure them) should be on equal footing with someone who can design or who can code. This is...hard. In particular it is hard to measure the skill/contributions of designers/ux/ia people and site builders. So, if you have ideas on metrics that measure their skills, please share those ideas!
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Comments
I like the idea. For this to
I like the idea. For this to be useful though there should be some kind of a scale or explanation somewhere explaining what the numbers mean. For example I have written several modules with thousands of users, I've contributed documentation, I've helped in the forums, and I promptly solve all issues in my queues. I hang out in IRC often too, and participate on groups.drupal.org. Yet somehow, I'm only a 5. With years of Drupal experience and what I consider to be deep community involvement, I consider myself quite a capable and proficient Drupal developer. I wouldn't want an employer seeing that 5 and thinking "oh, he's only 5 of 11, he must not be very good" -- because if I'm only a 5, the threshold for higher contribution levels must be extraordinarily high.
consider contrib to groups.drupal.org
Since group started several people contribute on groups.drupal.org as well. You should consider that as well.
and contribs to localize.drupal.org
While of a different nature, it would be nice if contributions there would somehow be factored in too.
How often are the scores
How often are the scores recalculated?
It would be nice if it was accompanied by a "Last calculated on:".
Not often. We just published
Not often. We just published a new algorithm that recalculated scores. This is our first update to the algorithm since it's launch at DrupalCon SF. I'll have a blog post soon with some more information for you.
Providing an idea of when the scores were calculated is a good idea. I'll look into adding that, thanks!
IRC & g.d.o
I believe Drupal IRC has a log online, Perhaps if you did a count as to the # of times the person's name appears in the log, that could be helpful.
I'm also for the groups.drupal.org contribution. Thats speaks well especially for local groups and non-coders. A lot of planning which find themselves as code get started at groups.drupal.org. Perhaps it can be argued that most of the planning from non coders and coders alike happen there. For local groups, it is also possible to see event organisers in g.d.o events. These are the flame bearers for a lot of local user groups
So, it's hard to say
So, it's hard to say considering that we don't know the algorithm used, which is clearly a feature, but it seems to me that one possible improvement is refining the logic used on the number of projects/commits a person has. Its true that, within the scope of modules, having more projects is not necessarily better than a few good ones. However, in the theme world that is not always true. It is possible to maintain many themes and for them to be usable and in good shape without having as many updates, etc as modules. The energy required to contrib/maintain a theme is lower so themers are able to crank out more themes. Plus, in many ways the quality of a theme is subjective as the aesthetic aspect is perhaps foremost in choosing a theme.
Impossible to read your
Impossible to read your content with the background. Pity.
open source.
I don't really know how to improve this system because it is closed. Which it should not be in theory, but in practice maybe. It is similar to simple security: ideally the algorithm should be open, but in practice simple security can be reverse engineered. So, unless the CtR algorithm was smart enough to see abuse, then it has to be remained closed, and while it cannot account for those things, how useful is it really? One could possibly argue that it is harmful because it becomes so subjective.
Admittedly, I thought this was a good idea, but now that I lost points, I am not so inclined to say so. This may just be a petty reaction, but its hard to react in any other way given the closed nature of it.
It seems to be that there are number of things that could have changed in the algorithm. But given that I contribute a lot to Drupal in a lot of significant ways, and there are still a number of cases of community members that should have much higher scores, the algorithm is still not accurate. Of course you cannot automate a lot of things, but with each case of false positives, your test loses creditability.
My advice is to instead of trying to define the rules of contribution by code, define them in logical wording and open that up to the public. Then create your algorithms around that; it will be a process of back and forth with abuse, but so is the current method. I think this being an open process is necessary for it to remain valuable in the long run.
No credit for multiple contributions?
While it is a valid point that you shouldn't encourage folks to contribute dozens of low quality duplicate modules, does that mean there is no credit given for having multiple projects? First of all, it is a lot of work and time to create a module or theme (even a fairly bad one) so I'm really not sure this would be exploited to the extreme you describe. Also, shouldn't the people at drupal.org that approve projects make sure there aren't redundant or really bad projects allowed? I am a project maintainer and am currently working on a second project. Because I am spending all my free time in the evenings coding and testing this, I have been pretty quiet in the drupal.org community of late. I have less time to spend in the issue queues, IRC etc because I am busy working on this project. So it is a little disheartening to hear that I would actually be penalized for spending my time this way. Perhaps I should instead spend my time posting random comments around drupal.org??
we're not really saying
We're not really saying what credit is or isn't given.
In other words...don't worry, keep rocking.
The algorithm doesn't seem to
The algorithm doesn't seem to take enough notice of module contributors. Checking my own rating, and those of others, I'm surprised that significant contributions (in terms of development time) don't seem to result in many brownie points here. Sometimes module "maintainers" are just maintainers, but very often and especially with more specialised modules, they are the sole designers and developers of the modules concerned with little or no contributions received from others. Put simply, it seems if I want to improve my score I need to spend more time posting in forums and less time writing code and uploading it to drupal.org.
Project usage
Project usage stats are available and perhaps should be considered too. A module that nobody is using is arguably not valuable to the community, regardless of how many hours of development have gone in. ON the other hand, some relatively trivial (in terms of development effort) modules are used by thousands. I suggest choosing a minimum usage level (50?) and regarding that as "valuable" without perhaps any additional value for higher usage.
Translation
I wonder if translation contributions are taken into account somehow?
New username not tracked
I switched my username early this year from tcindie (which is tracked) to willvincent, which is not tracked. So I haven't accrued any CTR score all year, and I've been much much more active on d.o this year than previous years. I wonder if that's something that can be fixed or not.. Can it?
Hi Will,
Hi Will,
Yes, we are actually still tracking the progress even if your username changes. The lookup is by username, but all of the association is done via UID - http://certifiedtorock.com/u/261788
If you feel like it should be higher than a 4 then that's a different discussion.
We will be fixing your username probably in the next 3 months.
Thanks!
Should radioactivity as a
Should radioactivity as a concept be included in the algorithm? Someone who was very active 2 years ago, set up a group, created a couple of modules, but haven't contributed since should have their score reduce over time IMHO.
CTR not open
I love this thing, Certified to Rock. A closed system system with no accountability. I have contributed to documentation, on IRC, and about 20 patches to 10 or so different module, as well as having 5 different sandbox modules that are actually used by people. And yet, I get a 1. I could sign up with a new account and do nothing and get a 1. If you are worried about people gaming the system, then your algorithm is to blame. Open it up, let us take a look. Shoot, even Reddit has their code open and visible to people.
Quit wierd
I am member since 3 years, providing severals patches du Drupal core, active in the d8-core issue queue, written 3 modules and documentation pages, with more than 50 edits. I consider myself as a very skilled Drupal developper as I can understand d7 model and working with the API very efficiently.
I also get a 1, which is the same note that I should have if I just entered my name in the system... :D