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# How to help Emacs maintainers?
Bastien Guerry

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<https://bzg.fr/en/how-to-help-gnu-emacs-maintainers/>

After 11 years of helping as the Org maintainer, I would
like to share a few lessons learned.  My goal is help everyone take
care of Emacs maintainance by taking care of Emacs maintainers.

# Discussion

BBB:

- agreed, I appreciate that the list isn't split. 
  - vastly simplifies workflows.
- (Missing context) Wouldn't they be missing the key part, Emacs?
  - Questioner: (ah, i understood forking for a different toolset, vs markdown-based org-mode on Emacs, apologies)
  - Bastien Guerry: <https://list.orgmode.org/87y2jvkeql.fsf@gnu.org/>
- devil's advocate to Karl's point now though: is that from habit?
- link syntax in markdown is impossible to remember for simplifying e.g. keyword syntax can be made regular. consistency across levels is extremely hard due to interactions between features, in part because you only encounter those much later in implementation. another part of the issue is that Org has more features than pandoc markdown so it is sometimes unrepresentable.
- interestingly Timothy has solved most of the markdown &> org
  - plain orgmode is easy to visualize. with markdown you need to export this if you have many md lines. org tables is a clear example of the visualization
- I think the argument of the best syntax is a hard battle to fight, but where the bar is clear is the software (org-mode) and what it can do with it, as of today.
- FYI org-sidebar provides a backlinks tool
- Backlinks! Yes!
- Backlinks for me: <https://karl-voit.at/2020/07/22/org-super-links/>
- was going to say : many of the org-roam features should make their way into core org-mode eventually
- how to manage and cache other types of data that are similar to backlinks
- something like org-id caching, you mean?
- alphapapa: not quite, more things that we don't want to put in the org file directly; e.g. babel caches for huge pieces of data
- id caching for performance would be great, some of the vizualisation things are very interesting too
  - it is a hard problem

BBB feedback:

- Thank you for taking the time to share your accumulated wisdom with us, Bastien :)
- merci Bastien!

IRC:

- I love it when people just kick it old school and write things out.
- the spiderman syndrome is evil. it causes imposter syndrome that god knows how many contributors it has cost us
- excellent analysis on bdfl/spidysyndrome, you can see it play out in other communities as well
- Very interesting, I suppose I get an idea that maintainers are put on a pedestal, and you see a lot of the good, and bad from both sides of the spectrum. It can be thankless, but also incredibly rewarding. It's easy to miss the forest for the trees, and keep in mind that most every piece of FLOSS software is a very decentralized and maintanance heavy vs. centralized and focused on LOC. 
- i don't get the project vs product
  - project is the process of creating the product (usually)
  - because "project" has been redefined over time to mean the product (such as the codebase), together with the project as in the endeavor to create/develop it
  - Project is a greater scope than product, in my view.  A project is not only the code, but the relationships with others who interact with it.  The product can be the same, but doesn't usually include the support aspect since it's "free".  
- FLOSS software is a fascinating psychological study on that ACDC concept.
- i feel that this doesnt apply only to maintainers. So many managers should listen to it too
- It is really good advice to keep in mind as a manager
- GUIX has a really great community, and has folk like 'jgart' mainly, that has package maintaince workshops where they invite newbies and experienced users alike to contribute packages to GUIX. 
- one of the things that hasn't been brought up yet is maintainer territoriality, I know for many of my projects I can be quite territorial, sometimes unintentionally
- That kind of contribution is invaluable for being an inviting environment for congtributing to a project.
- I think even if the maintainer doesn't intend this potential contributors can perceive it
- Awesome talk! Not just in the context of Org-mode!
- The hand written slides are so engaging!

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