Authorship Tests

[frobnitzem]

Run a series of tests on authorship lists. Create a repository and scan it with several API calls to determine the full extent of identification we can get on authors.

• Create a test repository with each of the following kinds of activity:
  * a commit from the main author (set name and email to something unique inside command-line git-config)
  * an accepted PR from @rmmilewi
  * a rejected PR from a third party
  * an issue reporting a bug from @elaineraybourn
  * an accepted PR from @frobnitzem that contains a squashed commit log with contributions from a third author
  - note: author and committer is distinguished
  * a merge-commit by the main author with a third-party's changes
• get_contributors
• get_stats_contributors
• get_collaborators
• write a short document explaining the test setup and results from each API call.

Earlier, not actionable ideas:

• confluence activity logs?
• should also check mailing lists (e.g. slate / scalapack) and project twitter / facebook pages

[frobnitzem]

Additional Authors:

• We need to check whether we can find folks who setup the CI pipelines and commit policies.

[elaineraybourn]

Regarding authorship, I believe we demonstrated today that corroborating/cross-checking with publicly available social media posts and project artifacts can be very helpful in providing contextual information about projects. I like the comment about including automation into the scope of contribution.

[elaineraybourn]

I know we have been using the term "author" here, but we use "contributor" in our documentation. Let's choose one. We may also consider the following as we progress:

• The impact of ECP funding on growth of the repos -- is funding guiding the science and development, or are the repos developers leveraging funding to continue on paths determined by other factors?
• Different definitions of community to analyze data--Is there co-evolution among dependencies (people and software)?

[frobnitzem]

A helpful, extensive, background reference on git features is present here:
https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2