join.html

---
layout: default
title: Join
permalink: /join/
description: >-
  How to join EthioNLP, add your work to the ecosystem, and contribute datasets,
  models, papers and events.
---

{%- assign repo = site.repository -%}

<div class="page-head">
  <div class="wrap wrap--wide">
    <p class="eyebrow">Join</p>
    <h1 class="page-head__title">Joining as a member</h1>
    <p class="lede">
      Researchers, students and practitioners interested in NLP for Ethiopian
      languages are welcome. There is no vetting step and no fee. Members are
      asked to contribute to the community's work, attend events when they can,
      and keep to the
      <a href="{{ '/standards/' | relative_url }}">community standards</a>.
    </p>
    <div class="row" style="margin-top: var(--sp-5)">
      <a class="btn btn--lg" href="https://github.com/{{ repo }}/issues/new?template=join-community.yml" rel="noopener">
        {% include icon.html name="github" %} Add me to the community
      </a>
      <a class="btn btn--lg btn--ghost" href="#teams">I'm registering a team</a>
      <a class="btn btn--lg btn--ghost" href="#channels">Community channels</a>
      <a class="btn btn--lg btn--ghost"
         href="https://github.com/{{ repo }}/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md"
         rel="noopener">All the ways to contribute</a>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

{%- comment -%} ── Membership categories ────────────────────────────────────── {%- endcomment -%}
<section class="band band--tight" id="categories">
  <div class="wrap wrap--wide">
    <div class="section-head">
      <h2 class="section-head__title">Two kinds of membership</h2>
      <p class="section-head__note">{{ site.data.membership.note }}</p>
    </div>
    <div class="grid grid--2">
      {%- for c in site.data.membership.categories -%}
      <article class="card">
        <h3 class="card__title">{{ c.title }}</h3>
        <div class="card__body">
          <p><strong>{{ c.who }}</strong></p>
          <p>{{ c.detail }}</p>
          <ul>
            {%- for r in c.rights %}
            <li>{{ r }}</li>
            {%- endfor %}
          </ul>
        </div>
      </article>
      {%- endfor -%}
    </div>
    <p class="muted" style="margin-top: var(--sp-4)">
      If it is unclear which applies, choose either; a maintainer will say if
      the other fits better.
    </p>
  </div>
</section>

<!-- ── Teams ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── -->
<section class="band band--alt" id="teams">
  <div class="wrap wrap--wide">
    <div class="section-head section-head--split">
      <div>
        <p class="eyebrow">For groups</p>
        <h2>Registering a lab, project or student group</h2>
        <p class="lede">
          A team registers its Hugging Face and GitHub <em>organisations</em>
          rather than individual models. From then on, work the team publishes
          that covers an Ethiopian language is listed on this site
          automatically, and work outside those languages is not included.
        </p>
        <p class="lede">
          Team members do not have to be listed here first.
        </p>
      </div>
      {%- if site.team_form_url %}
      <a class="btn btn--lg" href="{{ site.team_form_url }}" rel="noopener">
        Register a team
      </a>
      {%- endif %}
      <a class="btn btn--lg{% if site.team_form_url %} btn--ghost{% endif %}" href="https://github.com/{{ repo }}/issues/new?template=register-team.yml" rel="noopener">
        {% include icon.html name="github" %} {% if site.team_form_url %}Or use GitHub{% else %}Register a team{% endif %}
      </a>
    </div>

    <div class="split">
      <div class="card">
        <h3 class="card__title">What we ask for</h3>
        <ul class="ticks">
          <li>The team name, and a sentence on what it works on.</li>
          <li>Your Hugging Face organisation, your GitHub organisation, or both.</li>
          <li>A contact person, so we know who to ask.</li>
        </ul>
      </div>
      <div class="card">
        <h3 class="card__title">What happens next</h3>
        <ul class="ticks">
          <li>The form opens a pull request adding your team to <code>_data/organisations.yml</code>.</li>
          <li>A maintainer reviews the entry and merges it.</li>
          <li>The nightly sync reads both organisations and lists what it finds.</li>
          <li>Your team appears on the <a href="{{ '/ecosystem/' | relative_url }}">ecosystem page</a> with a live count.</li>
        </ul>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</section>

<!-- ── The flow ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── -->
<section class="band">
  <div class="wrap wrap--wide">
    <div class="section-head">
      <p class="eyebrow">Being listed</p>
      <h2>What happens after you submit the form</h2>
      <p class="lede">
        You supply public identifiers once; the profile is generated from them.
      </p>
    </div>

    <div class="split split--sidebar">
      <ol class="steps">
        <li>
          <div>
            <h3>You give us your links</h3>
            <p>
              A personal site, a GitHub account, a Hugging Face account, a Google
              Scholar or ORCID page, whichever of those you have. One is enough;
              more means a fuller profile. You also pick which of the six
              research tracks you work on.
            </p>
          </div>
        </li>
        <li>
          <div>
            <h3>A workflow builds your profile</h3>
            <p>
              It reads those profiles, works out your name, affiliation
              and photo, resolves your OpenAlex author record, and opens a pull
              request adding a single file: <code>_members/your-name.md</code>.
            </p>
          </div>
        </li>
        <li>
          <div>
            <h3>A maintainer merges it</h3>
            <p>
              Usually within a day or two. You get a page at
              <code>/community/your-name/</code>.
            </p>
          </div>
        </li>
        <li>
          <div>
            <h3>Your work is listed automatically from then on</h3>
            <p>
              The nightly sync picks up your new papers from OpenAlex, Semantic
              Scholar and DBLP, your Ethiopian-language models and datasets from
              Hugging Face, and your relevant repositories from GitHub. Work you
              publish later is listed without a further submission.
            </p>
          </div>
        </li>
      </ol>

      <aside class="stack">
        <div class="card">
          <h3 class="card__title" style="font-size: var(--t-md)">Without a GitHub account</h3>
          <p class="card__body">
            Email your links to
            <a href="mailto:{{ site.email }}?subject=Join%20EthioNLP">{{ site.email }}</a>
            and a member will file it for you.
          </p>
        </div>

        <div class="card">
          <h3 class="card__title" style="font-size: var(--t-md)">What we do with your data</h3>
          <p class="card__body">
            The site stores only what you give us, and only what is already
            public. Each record is a plain text file in a public repository; you
            can read it, edit it or delete it with a pull request.
          </p>
        </div>

        <div class="card">
          <h3 class="card__title" style="font-size: var(--t-md)">After you join</h3>
          <p class="card__body">
            You will be sent two documents: the community membership rules and
            the research guidelines. Ask in one of the channels below if you have
            not received them.
          </p>
        </div>
      </aside>
    </div>
  </div>
</section>

<!-- ── Channels ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── -->
<section class="band band--alt" id="channels">
  <div class="wrap wrap--wide">
    <div class="section-head">
      <p class="eyebrow">Where the community talks</p>
      <h2>Community channels</h2>
      <p class="lede">
        The channels do not require you to be listed on the site first. They are
        covered by the <a href="{{ '/standards/' | relative_url }}">community
        standards</a>, and the Telegram group has
        <a href="{{ '/standards/#channels' | relative_url }}">rules of its
        own</a> to read before posting.
      </p>
    </div>

    <div class="grid grid--3">
      {%- for c in site.data.channels %}
      <article class="card card--link">
        <span class="focus__cell-icon" style="margin-bottom: var(--sp-3)">{% include icon.html name=c.icon %}</span>
        <h3 class="card__title">{{ c.name }}</h3>
        <p class="card__body">{{ c.blurb }}</p>
        <div class="card__foot">
          <a class="btn btn--sm btn--ghost stretched" href="{{ c.url }}" rel="noopener">
            Open {{ c.name }} {% include icon.html name="arrow" %}
          </a>
        </div>
      </article>
      {%- endfor %}
    </div>
  </div>
</section>

<!-- ── Contributing ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── -->
<section class="band" id="contribute">
  <div class="wrap wrap--wide">
    <div class="section-head">
      <p class="eyebrow">Contributing</p>
      <h2>What members add</h2>
      <p class="lede">
        Each part of this site comes from a file in one repository. The six
        below are the ones members ask about most often; the
        <a href="{{ '/contribute/' | relative_url }}">contribute page</a> lists
        the other ways, with the effort each takes.
      </p>
    </div>

    <div class="grid grid--2">
      <article class="card">
        <span class="badge badge--gold">Dataset or model</span>
        <h3 class="card__title" style="margin-top: var(--sp-3)">Datasets and models</h3>
        <p class="card__body">
          Push it to the <a href="{{ site.social.huggingface }}" rel="noopener">EthioNLP
          organisation on Hugging Face</a>, or to your own account with the
          language tagged (<code>am</code>, <code>ti</code>, <code>om</code>,
          <code>gez</code>…). The nightly sync finds it and lists it on the
          ecosystem page. Ask in a channel for write access to the organisation.
        </p>
      </article>

      <article class="card">
        <span class="badge badge--blue">Paper</span>
        <h3 class="card__title" style="margin-top: var(--sp-3)">Papers and identifiers</h3>
        <p class="card__body">
          If your member file carries an <code>orcid</code>,
          <code>openalex</code>, <code>semantic_scholar</code> or
          <code>dblp</code> id, your papers are added automatically, including
          ACL Anthology entries. For records the indexes miss, add them to
          <a href="https://github.com/{{ repo }}/blob/master/_data/publications_manual.yml"><code>_data/publications_manual.yml</code></a>.
        </p>
      </article>

      <article class="card">
        <span class="badge badge--rust">Event or talk</span>
        <h3 class="card__title" style="margin-top: var(--sp-3)">Talks and events</h3>
        <p class="card__body">
          The monthly seminar is for work in progress. Choose a date in the
          form, give a title, and a pull request is opened for you. Workshops,
          tutorials and hackathons use the same form.
        </p>
        <div class="card__foot">
          <a class="btn btn--sm" href="{{ site.data.seminar.propose_url }}" rel="noopener">Propose a talk</a>
        </div>
      </article>

      <article class="card">
        <span class="badge badge--green">News</span>
        <h3 class="card__title" style="margin-top: var(--sp-3)">News items</h3>
        <p class="card__body">
          Coverage, an award, a release, a defended thesis. Add
          <code>_news/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md</code> with a title and a date, or send
          it to the mailing list and someone will add it for you.
        </p>
      </article>

      <article class="card">
        <span class="badge badge--violet">A language with no work yet</span>
        <h3 class="card__title" style="margin-top: var(--sp-3)">Languages with no work yet</h3>
        <p class="card__body">
          Many of Ethiopia's languages have no corpus, no annotation guidelines
          and no baseline. If you speak one, say so in a channel and members will
          help you scope the work.
        </p>
      </article>

      <article class="card">
        <span class="badge">This website</span>
        <h3 class="card__title" style="margin-top: var(--sp-3)">This website</h3>
        <p class="card__body">
          Every page, script and data file is in
          <a href="https://github.com/{{ repo }}" rel="noopener">{{ repo }}</a>.
          Corrections to a person's affiliation, a broken link or a badly worded
          sentence are all welcome pull requests.
        </p>
      </article>
    </div>
  </div>
</section>