Six main areas arose (in no particular order):<\/p>\n
- \n
- Intrinsic<\/strong> – This is an internal motivator focused on personal growth and self-actualization. Here people contribute because it is fun for its own sake and because they grow personally from it.<\/li>\n
- Extrinsic<\/strong> – This is an external motivator focused on material recognition such as a badge that a person can point to as a representation\u00a0 and\/or certification of their contribution.<\/li>\n
- Community<\/strong> – This motivator is based on our human need to feel part of a larger group that shares our view of the world – having a sense of belonging. (See Why Do People Join and Stay Part Of a Community<\/a> for a deeper exploration here.)<\/li>\n
- Preemptive Generosity<\/strong> – This motivator is about giving something before it is asked for. It could be anything and it’s tied to our feelings of reciprocity. In a broad perspective, open source itself often follows this rule by releasing code before others know to ask for it.<\/li>\n
- Social Value<\/strong> – Motivation here is about feeling as if your contributions create a better world. There needs to be a clear and strong sense of impact. As Jimmy Wales once put it<\/a>, “Usually, when people have an eight-hour binge of editing Wikipedia they think, well, I made the world a little bit better place than it was when I started.”<\/li>\n
- Helpfulness<\/strong> – This motivator is based purely on the desire to help others and give back. This is less about changing the world per se and more about having an impact in a person’s life. Similar but different.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
When we can be explicit around these motivators, we can design contributor experiences that support them. That creates a more fulfilling experience for contributors and allows a project to grow while remaining meaningful.<\/p>\n
Below is a PDF I put together to explore these motivators as they relate to Mozilla (it’s certainly incomplete). However, these should be relevant in all community driven projects and be non-unique to Mozilla.<\/p>\n
![\"contributor](\"http:\/\/seanbolton.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/07\/contributor-motivation.jpg?w=696\")
<\/a><\/p>\n[Post also appeared on Sean Bolton’s blog<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why does understanding motivation for open source matter? This allows community builders to design more fulfilling experiences for contributors. It allows a contributor to be recognized in way he or … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31773],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/657"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1972"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- Extrinsic<\/strong> – This is an external motivator focused on material recognition such as a badge that a person can point to as a representation\u00a0 and\/or certification of their contribution.<\/li>\n