Drupal's contribution recognition system is a key part of the way we recognize and incentivize contribution in the Drupal project. It's a system that needs constant care and feeding, both to ensure that we're recognizing the many kinds of contributions people and organizations are making, and to ensure that the system itself is proportional and fair for the effort being put in.
Event Sponsorship credit
We're about to introduce a new way for organizations to improve their marketplace rank. Drupal.org/community/events has allowed organizers to feature their sponsors since the beginning. Now, those sponsors listed will automatically receive contribution credit as well. To start, this will be a fixed amount for small events and a larger one for DrupalCon, but in the future, in collaboration with event organizers, we'd like it to scale to each sponsor's level of support.
We hope this will encourage companies to do the important work of financially supporting the grass roots events that help our community thrive. (And reward those who already do!).
Reducing redundancy
We're also making a small tweak to the system this week related to how we recognize Contributor Roles. Contributor Roles are community submitted, and represent all of the many ways contribution happens in our community. However, we want to avoid double counting credit for certain types of roles. For example, issue credit is a fundamental pillar of our contribution recognition system, and some of our community roles such as 'Project Contributor' are also organically receiving credit from issues.
We will no longer be granting marketplace rank to organizations sponsoring roles that are already represented in other ways, and we'll update the contributor role descriptions to reflect when this restriction applies.
We expect this change to help level the playing field between some organizations who've made extensive use of the role system, and others who have kept a laser focus on contribution and innovation directly in issues.