[Incubator] The need for mantra

[Regina Obe]

Are the ones in grey the ones you want to keep?

 

The ones not in grey – GeoForAll is a pretty high reason why people ask for mantras.  We don’t have a discourse category for it to my knowledge, but if we did that could be a good place to put it and if someone is managing GeoForAll – they could send the user a discourse chat note with the mantra.

 

Google summer of code, yes we do have category for that, so I feel we can remove that.  They’ll introduce themselves anyway and so it would be clear and they can be given their accounts once they are accepted. That is rarely done when they first introduce themselves.

 

From: Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2026 2:59 PM
To: Regina Obe <lr at pcorp.us>
Cc: System Administration Committee Discussion/OSGeo <sac at lists.osgeo.org>; OSGeo Incubator Committee <Incubator at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: Re: [Incubator] The need for mantra

 

Thanks, that is an interesting experiment for sure!

 

I like discourse mechaisms for slowly/automatically building trust and establishing a person is ... well a person.  

 

As for the onboarding process, we started this conversation about OSGeo ID and "mantra", so we are looking very technical intimidating list of questions (weblate etc...).

 

I think if we look at this from a "Introduce yourself" / "why do you want to join OSGeo" perspective then the initial questions could be smaller, easier to respond to, and less intimidating.

 

But we can work on the template as we go, thus far I think this shows a lot of promise. 

 

Do you need an OSGeo Account?

 

Requested OSGeo Account service permissions: (remove any that do not apply):

*	Website: Create a member profile to join OSGeo Foundation
*	Wiki: Edit wiki pages
*	QGIS Plugin: Publish your own QGIS plugin (Note: Installing a plugin is available to everyone and does not require an OSGeo account)
*	Code: Create a repository or contribute to a repository on git.osgeo.org <http://git.osgeo.org> 
*	Google Summer of Code: Join as a participant

*	Website: Add a project to the OSGeo project directory
*	Translate: Translate a project on weblate
*	GeoForAll: Participate in GeoForAll initiative


Reading the above list, some things like GeoForAll and Add a project could be better handled by their respective discourse forums?

- -

Jody Garnett

 

 

On Jan 14, 2026 at 10:34:44 AM, Regina Obe via Incubator <incubator at lists.osgeo.org <mailto:incubator at lists.osgeo.org> > wrote:

As discussed in this email and in the incubation committee meeting today. 
The need for mantra is burdensome.  It is burdensome for users asking for
one and also for those who have to address them and 80% of the time there is
no point to the ask.

Main issues are:

1) People ask for an osgeo id simply to introduce themselves to the
community and their interests and for some reason think they need an osgeo
id to do so.
2) People ask for mantras cause they want to download QGIS software and
think they need one.


Then there are some people that really need OSGeo ids cause they need to
publish a QGIS plugin.


Jody thought maybe using discourse in some way to field these might help.

I created a Introduction category with a template to just test this idea
out.

https://discourse.osgeo.org/c/introductions


If you notice if you create a new topic in this category, it will prefill
with a template.

Anyone else that asks me to give them a mantra without sufficient
information to do so, I'm going to force them to fill this out to prove
their need and if they do, I'll just private message them on discourse with
the mantra.

This is of course an experiment, but I figure is frictionless way for people
to introduce themselves to us and if it doesn't work for mantra, at the very
least, it will be easier to filter out from those folk who use the "General"
category to introduce themselves.  I'm going to move all the intro messages
out of general and into this category.

Discourse Admins - please fill free to edit the category template - which is
located here -
https://discourse.osgeo.org/c/introductions/edit/topic-template

Thanks,
Regina


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