First impressions by a newcomer

[steinwinde]

I'm a software developer and completely new to the project. I would like to suggest a few points regarding Github and Jira:

1. It would be great to have "main" as the web-app's main branch instead of "master". I think this is self-evident for a project in this space by now and it is in particular true for newly created repositories.

2. It would look better, if the web-app repository did not contain glaringly obvious bugs in its main branch. (E.g. compare #WEB-11 with the numerous broken setup wizards.) If a section of the web-app is unusable, it should be moved into a branch. End users should not be bothered with these sections, and the main branch should be kept free of them - for releases.

3. It helps newcomers like me to understand a project, when tags are used more frequently. I understand that there were very, very few releases over the last 10 years, but there must have been some other important moments in the time of the project. Why not create some sort of project memory with tags? (Only one tag was moved over from the community-app. Hopefully there are more tags in the future.)

4. Newcomers like me (at least those willing to get an environment set up locally) will first look at the documentation available on the Github README and CONTRIBUTING. Regarding the latter: 1. There are several references to Gitter, but none to Slack. Do you still favour Gitter? 2. Is it really worth to give SourceForge my email address to join your mailing list? 3. Do I need to squash, when this can be done by the person integrating the pull request too? Etc. Does anyone feel in charge of this page? (BTW, both README and CONTRIBUTING are in many respects extremely well done and helpful!)

5. Jira is great, but maybe you could polish a little bit its configuration. For example:

• It would be great to have a Jira status "Won't Do", "Cannot Reproduce" or "Canceled". Yesterday I've had a case where I figured quite quickly after creating a ticket that I probably overlooked something. Because the Jira ticket existed already, I saw no other means to get rid of my obsolete ticket than describing a completely different problem with it (title, description). Awkward.
• My impression is that if I follow the template for pull requests, Jira doesn't notice. If I apply the recommended format for commit messages to the pull request, Jira notices.
• Frankly, an "App Action" called "Tempo" looks ironic, considering the speed with which this project produces releases.
• The labels don't make sense.

I hope all this is not taken as criticism, but really as ideas - we are all volunteers :-)

[steinwinde]

Moved to Slack...