...it would be helpful that the first few tools people see are well documented with a lot of activity around them...
Check out my comment in the Maintainer discussion.
[It looks like a good way to start might just be a loose "Volunteer as a maintainer" function on each Tool page that allows users to say who they are and how they plan on contributing. This can be accomplished by just pencilling yourself onto the Tool's Wiki page but it could be massively helpful when sorting Tools to be able to have that extra metadata that shows where people have volunteered to answer questions and where no one has.](http://www.farmhack.org/comment/102#comment-102)
I also just added a "Last Tool Wiki Update" column on the Tools page. Now the Tool with the most recently edited documentation floats to the top. That is at least some kind of indication of activity. Another metric we could publish there might be "# of Tool's Wiki Updates" and "# of Tool's Forum topics". I started with what we have because that was a quick fix. The other two metrics will require an hour or so of coding.
It looks like a good way to start might just be a loose "Volunteer as a maintainer" function on each Tool page that allows users to say who they are and how they plan on contributing. This can be accomplished by just pencilling yourself onto the Tool's Wiki page but it could be massively helpful when sorting Tools to be able to have that extra metadata that shows where people have volunteered to answer questions and where no one has.
If you go to a user's page, there is now a "contact" tab. See http://www.farmhack.org/user/8
The problem is we're not linking to user pages from anywhere right now. It's going to take a little leg work to modify all the templates that spit out a user's name.
"It would be nice to be able to see who was the last editor without going into the revision history..."
Also agreed. Perhaps something near the top of a Wiki that says:
Posted by [username] on [post-date]. Last edited by [username] on [last-edit-date].
[Some considerations moving forward with fitting a lot of things into the Tools entity type](http://www.farmhack.org/comment/97#comment-97)
I'm not revving to go on my proposal yet because of the reason I mention in the comment linked to above, "...if decide something is not a Tool, we don't lose the Forum and Wiki page when we delete the Tool," but my proposal is one idea on how we might structure things in the future.
Comments
In response to
How about "Volunteer and write a blurb on how you will help"
Done, done, and done :).
Agreed, private messages enabled, still needs links though
See related discussion