"Self-selection of project groups" filters for a specific subgroup of potential volunteers

[rgilton]

The proposal currently states:

A project group is a smaller group of one or more self-selected volunteers who have a particular interest in working on something together.

This is not ideal as it means that basically only volunteers who have the confidence to form a project group will do. Volunteers who want to get involved in development, but do not have the confidence to form a group (or don't know anyone else to form a group) will not. This does not lead to a diverse set of volunteers, but rather filters for volunteers who are basically all the same (i.e. white male, educated at an English university, and also most likely who are all at the same location and age).

Furthermore, getting to the point of proposing a project will require a fair amount of knowledge of the working of SR. New volunteers will have ideas as will those who have been involved for a long time, and the mechanism for getting these ideas into the 'system' should be the same for all. It should be the dev team's responsibility to oversee the collation and formation of project ideas (through more than just a github project of issues -- it should engage volunteers, teams, education experts, robotics experts, and literature in their formation), as well as the formation of the volunteer groups who are going to be involved in it. It should also be responsible for providing a way of presenting the current options that are available to volunteers.

The development process should present an open and welcoming environment people with different kinds of skills, and having 'self-selecting' groups will not encourage this diversity.