Maintainer responsibilities

maintainers/responsibilities.md

@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+# Maintainer responsibilities
+
+## Monitor notifications
+
+Watch discussions and proposals from these communication channels:
+
+- GitHub
+- Discourse
+- Matrix
+
+Maintain your entry in the [`CODEOWNERS`](https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/customizing-your-repository/about-code-owners) file in the respective repository.
+GitHub will then request reviews for pull requests that change files you own.
+
+
+Set the notification level on the [Development > Documentation](https://discourse.nixos.org/c/dev/documentation/25) Discourse category to "watching".
+
+Join the [Nix* Documentation](https://matrix.to/#/#docs:nixos.org) Matrix room and enable relevant notifications.
+
+As a maintainer, you have the responsibility to be responsive to `@` mentions
+on GitHub, Discourse, and Matrix. If said mention is low on your priority list,
+you can respond by saying that.
+
+Finally, you should also make sure to subscribe to external resources that
+falls into your area. For example, if you are a maintainer of the documentation
+team, you need to be aware of the stabilisation status of Nix features. If you
+are a maintainer of the security team, you need to be subscribed to CVE
+publications.
+
+## Provide guidance
+
+As a maintainer, you will have to guide potential contributors.
+
+This can be done by taking questions from the Discourse forum, and encouraging
+the poster to write issues on GitHub, if needed, and then guide them to write
+Pull Requests.
+
+In any case, make sure to reserve time for doing Pull Request reviews, and to
+only pick subjects that fall withing files that are in your `CODEOWNERS` entry.
+
+## Take ownership of issues, pull requests, and source code
+
+As a maintainer, you are responsible for the code you approve and merge: it is
+also your responsibility to follow-up on bugs and regressions caused by this
+code.