Making it easier to contribute

Mozillians
#1

Hello!

I’m not sure who to talk to about this so I’m reaching out to you all.

We all know that volunteer contributions are the heart of our communities. But somehow, beginning to contribute to Mozilla is usually very difficult.

For example, if I want to contribute to coding and signed up on https://mozilla.org/contribute , I would get an email directing me wiki pages and mailing lists. Then I would have to ask around on IRC what should I do. I would only begin to contribute after someone on IRC or mailing list taught me the workflow of the team.

I find this process very difficult for newcomers. By experience, I learned that a lot of people are interested in our projects but they don’t know how to begin. They simply give up because they find participating too hard.

My idea is this: set up a ‘mentor’ for each team that will welcome and educate new contributors. They will ask newcomers about their skills and preferred domain, teach them the workflow of the team, teach them how to communicate with the team, send them good first bugs etc. That way, new contributors would have someone to turn to when they run into problems or need explanations about something.

I experienced this when I began my journey with the Marketplace App Review team. After I filled a form, I received a mail asking what were my experiences and the tools I had. Then a team member was assigned to me a they guided me through my first contribution. They taught me how to communicate with the team and gave a warm welcome. I felt more connected with the team. I was the same way with the Rep program.

I think we need this kind of ‘welcome mentor’ for each team because a lot of talented potential contributors are interested in our projects but find it difficult to start. The most common problems are: ‘what the heck is IRC?’, ‘who can help me solve this problem?’, ‘who can assign this bug to me?’. Those would not be a problem if newcomers had someone to talk to and mentor them.

What do you think?

TL;DR: We should have a ‘mentor’ for each team that will help new contributors to be involved.

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#2

Hey Mariot!

Thanks for this thinking. You will be happy to hear that the (vast) issues with the contribute page and are being tackled! We’re actually experimenting with radically changing the process of the contribute page and are going to be launching our second round of A/B tests very shortly.

You can read about the results of our last test here the TL;DR is that we found that people who already know their interests are searching and entering into those projects pretty directly via GitHub Bugzilla or IRC. It’s the people who aren’t so sure how they want to contribute that are heading to the contribute page.

Therefore rather than asking an exhaustive series of questions which sends you to a bunch more instructions we’re going to be offering people tasks they can jump right into!

We’re looking to launch the next round of tests in a few weeks and you can follow along on GitHub using the “contribute page” label here.

Once people have completed a few tasks we’ll reach out to them personally and see what else they’re interested in. Perhaps this would be a cool place to involve volunteer mentors, who can help direct new contributors to the tasks and teams that are right for them?

Hopefully through this next experiment we’ll get a better idea of how many people complete experiments so we get an idea of volume.

Let me know what you think!

Lucy

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#3

That’s great news Lucy!
It’s exactly what I had in mind. Helping people through small tasks at a
time.
Anyway, I’ll be watching this project if you don’t mind me tagging along :slight_smile:
It’ll be great for new contributors :slight_smile:

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