Problem/Motivation

People who use Drupal sometimes want to contribute back in some way. It is currently difficult for them to figure out how to do so. The pages/sections we currently have:

  • Getting Involved page -- which is incomplete, out of date, and confusing -- that page used to exist, but it has been removed as part of this update; the URL links to the Community landing page now.
  • Getting Involved Guide -- which is huge, with parts out of date, disorganized, and overwhelming
  • Community -- which is new and compact, but has a different aim (helping people find groups within the community, vs. contributing to the project)

So, we need a new Getting Involved section.

Project Goal

Create a new Getting Involved section that helps people:

  • Learn about the logistics, policies, and politics of contributing
  • Find an initial task to work on that is engaging and representative, but short-term
  • After completing an initial task, find deeper information about contributing, and more complex tasks

In doing this, we need to make sure that the entire Community section and Getting Involved guide:

  • Welcomes everyone, especially non-US audiences and people from our fastest-growing regions
  • Works for and appeals to non-developers as well as developers
  • Makes sure everyone feels that they are a valued part of the community
  • Doesn't assume everyone wants to contribute (time, money, or skills)
  • Connects new people with an initial short task with clear instructions (onboarding), and returning people with more complex, involved, ongoing tasks (keeping people engaged)

Plan

We are using issues in the Drupal.org Community Section project to track progress in creating the new Getting Involved Section. We have a Kanban board that shows the issues.

The steps we are following to create the section are as follows:

  1. [Done] Survey users. View the survey results
  2. [Done] Audit the existing content. See #2816011: Audit 'Getting Involved Guide'
  3. [Done] Identify "Personas" -- characteristics of people who would use the new section. See issue #3068287: Consensus on contribution personas, and the resulting list of Personas
  4. [In progress] Define standards for the content of the section, and tools to help enforce the standards. See #3072788: Evaluate, pick, and configure checking/linting tools for the Getting Involved Guide and #3069010: Develop writing style guidelines for the Getting Involved Guide
  5. [Done] Create a high-level outline for the section. See #3071313: Proposed Outline for the Getting involved Guide
  6. [Done] Create a content model (content types and views) and deploy to drupal.org. See #3089403: Create content types for a new Getting Involved section
  7. [In progress] Write and/or rearrange content for the section. See #3144893: [Meta] Content for the new Contributor Guide