Contribute/Best Practices

This page documents best practices about how to help new people get involved with Mozilla.

Provide Recognition

Consider recognizing someone's contribution--this can be something simple but is probably the most effective way to keep people interested in giving their time to the project.

Examples:

• List someone in the Friends of the Tree section in the WeeklyUpdates
• Comment in a fixed bug to say thanks
• Nominate someone to be a module owner or peer
• Create a new role in your project (eg, if someone likes to help new people get started, make them the Onboarding Lead)
• Badges

Create a 5 Minute Task

Consider creating a five minute task that is an easy introduction to your project for new contributors to give people a chance to get their foot in the door.

Not only will this help new contributors, but it will help you too. If someone says they are interested in getting involved but won't spend 5 minutes doing something, then this is probably not a relationship that is worth spending much of your time on.

Examples:

• Ask people to set up a Bugzilla account if they're interested in coding
• Ask someone to download a nightly build if they're interested in testing
• Ask someone to grab a download button if they're interested in marketing

Reach Out

Consider getting in touch with someone and asking if they need help. We have a history of wanting contributors to figure things out for themselves--that's great when it happens but Mozilla can be confusing even for long-time community member.

Examples:

• If you see someone in Bugzilla with 'New to Bugzilla' next to their name, send them an email
• If you haven't seen anything from an existing contributor in a while, get in touch and ask if they are being blocked by anything

Offer Incentives

Consider providing something to contributors to thank them for something they've done or to get them excited about an upcoming event or activity.

Examples:

• Security Bug Bounty
• Design Challenges
• Swag at events