arandr0

I think HN has been majorly mis-reading this -- it sounds like the article describes a Tinder-mediated get out the vote campaign. It attempts to reach youth (vastly more likely to be progressives, statistically) and convince them to vote by using a marketing strategy that works very well on youth in other media, that is, convince them attractive eligible potential partners care about (whatever is being sold: voting, owning a particular car brand, using a particular kind of perfume or cosmetic). It does not specifically target conservatives and again, especially in the UK, a minority of people 18-25 vote conservative. But for what it's worth, I believe the electoral system in the US will make this less effective there. Telling all the young millenials in college towns to go vote by quirky social media means is unlikely to have an effect on the older rural population (The campaign only targets 18-25 and a lot of people in rural areas don't use Tinder), and a lot of states can't be won only through college towns.

I think there is a very large difference (in ability to contribute to science and barrier to entry) between roughly three groups of people who once had academic background.

The first are industry R&D staff (like me) -- usually we _do_ keep at the forefront of research but aren't allowed to give much time to anything that isn't going to sell in three years and have limited avenues to publish (usually patents, but patents cost money and unlike scientists we have zero incentive to make them readable). Those people technically do contribute to science but their contributions have very reduced public impact compared to what academia gets, and that's a shame.

The second are people in support roles in either industry or academia that still work directly with science and scientists -- lab technicians, patent examiners and patent attorneys, staff writers at journals, grant writers/reviewers and program managers, most admin staff at science organizations, etc. Those people have easy avenues to learn about science and usually are very knowledgeable in at least one subfield, but they are not given any time or platform to contribute their own thoughts and sometimes their background is insufficiently technical for original contributions. There is also something to gain from them in citizen science initiatives though, they know what the problems are and what is being done to address them.

Then you have the people profiled in the article -- non-scientists of varied backgrounds that have worked in 100% non science occupation (or raised children) since grad school (IF they went to grad school). Those people may or may not have the background but they almost invariably have no good access to papers, no knowledge of modern working methods and quality standards and (most important) no community of like minded scientists to exchange ideas with and accept feedback from. And if they stay isolated, they are not going to be useful and would mostly benefit from an internship or something to learn what the field is actually about.

I actually wrote a short tutorial on this (geared towards enterprise though) a while back[1].

For open source, I would amend it by adding that you should hang out in the chat room -- you will pick up some answers to easy getting started questions by osmosis and be a better known name when you are ready to submit a patch -- and read any contributing guides that outline procedures for contributors. You should do this if you ever want to contribute even if you don't think you have the understanding/skill level to do so yet.

Over time I've begun to understand that what really causes issues with junior devs and established codebases is at least 50% psychological -- young good coders think code should be like a math problem, there is a number of formulas they know, they identify the problem, apply the formula, solve everything. When faced with a lot of code where the problem is not well-characterized, they start thinking they are not smart enough for the problem and the ensuing anxiety spiral usually makes them _actually_ not smart enough to see the forest for the trees.

[1] http://arandr.github.io/2015/01/17/how-i-learned-to-stop-wor...