15 Contributing to the useR! Knowledgebase

The useR! knowledgebase is a collective effort and everyone is welcome to contribute. It was created to document and centralize the information about the organization of useR! conferences, and gathers experiences, documents, and guidelines written by members of previous useR! organizing teams and of Forwards, the R Foundation taskforce on women and other under-represented groups. This documentation effort started in 2021, as part of the Google Summer of Documentation and is continued by the support of the useR! Working Group. We aim to keep this guide updated to serve as a guide for future useR! organizers and teams who are considering hosting a useR! conference.

The community is comprised by contributors, maintainers, and a steering committee. All contributions will be credited in the contributor page. The decision making process and governance structure are described in the useR! knowledgebase governance document

The useR! knowledgebase community abides to the code of conduct of the community.

15.1 Ways to contribute to this Knowledgebase

A contributor can create, review, and edit content, file issues, or participate in discussions about the structure and content of the guide.

The best way to start contributing is checking current issues, where discussions about content happen. Most issues have a label regarding the area of the conference, prefixed with area::, like area::communication and some other indicators, like the current person in charge, the status of the work (Ongoing , To Be Started, Feedback needed) and whether it is a maintainers issue, regarding the book technical side.
You can open new issues, comment on existing issues, and review merge requests.

To make a contribution, submit a Merge Request:

  1. Clone or fork the knowledgebase repository to your GitLab profile
  2. Create a new branch for each significant change being made.
  3. Push your new branch and create a merge request to dev. Branch main is protected and only the maintainers can push from dev to main.
  4. The knowledgebase maintainers may discuss some of your changes and ask for modifications before accepting the merge. If you make changes in the specific branch and push them, the merge request will update automatically.

For further information about decision-making, check our governance document.