Thunderbird/CommunicationChannels

These are the various communication channels used in the Thunderbird project. Please add them all here, so that we can have some kind of a portal to point people who want to get involved with the project to.

How to subscribe

Newsgroups are accessible through a newsgroup client (hum, let me think about one, oh yes, Thunderbird), and all of them are accessible as google groups or through a mailing list service. All of the items marked as newsgroups are listed here, so head over there to get the relevant information to connect!

If you're a user

• The Thunderbird blog
• GetSatisfaction A user-centric community support forum where you can get Thunderbird help and help other people with Thunderbird. Mozilla Messaging employees and volunteer champions read this forum and might help you with your issues. You can help the community support Thunderbird (register and then help other Thunderbird users- check out our Getting Started Guide to Thunderbird Support)! Support like all Mozilla activities is community driven where most of the community members are volunteers.
• SuMoMo An official but primarily volunteer-driven "knowledge base" where you can find quality articles about various Thunderbird topics. YOU can help by editing articles or adding articles or translating articles, no experience required! The articles will be reviewed for accuracy but reviews are generally very quick.
• MozillaZine knowledge base A community-maintained Knowledge Base with excellent articles about possibly more specific and/or technical topics.
• The FLOSS Thunderbird Manual An entire (unofficial) manual which helps you learn about Thunderbird. You can help! Anybody who spots an error can fix it by registering and then editing the manual themselves.
• mozilla.support.thunderbird (newsgroup) The support newsgroup for Thunderbird
• MozillaZine forums Other users hang out here and discuss nightly issues, new extensions...
• Thunderbird:Getting_Help also contains lots of relevant links.
• tb-support-crew is a mailing list to share raw informal support information, hot support links (e.g. support threads, websites and knowledge bases) and "meta" issues related to helping support Thunderbird users on Get Satisfaction, MozillaZine, GeckoZone and wherever else online folks are supporting Thunderbird users. Subscribe or unsubscribe at https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/tb-support-crew
• Feedback for Add-ons is a place to offer ideas, requests, or issues regarding any of the Thunderbird add-ons we release through Messaging Add-ons at mozilla labs. Please note that we're now encouraging people to leave feedback on the mozilla-labs Google Group.

If you're interested in the project

• tb-planning A low-volume, high signal-to-noise-ratio mailing-list that's devoted to high-level Thunderbird topics.
• tb-enterprise A mailing-list dedicated to people who want to deploy Thunderbird in a business environment, and the issues/concerns they might encounter.
• Planet Mozilla Messaging Thunderbird team's various blogs. Links to Thunderbird staff and contributor blogs can be found in the right sidebar of the home page if you want to avoid the planet "firehose"!
• Twitter You might want to follow these people: Standard8, lhirlimann, andreasn, bwinton, dmose, asutherland, rtanglao, mozjonathan, mixedpuppy, jrburke, clarkbw, davidascher, jenzed
• Planet Mozilla Might be worth a read as well.
• Mozilla Wiki This includes various general information about the Thunderbird project.
• You might want to read the Thunderbird/StatusMeetings, they give weekly status reports about how various projects are moving.
  • The minutes of these are also reproduced to the Mozilla Meetings blog
  • If you're interested in the release strategy, you might want to read Thunderbird/Driver_Meetings.
• We also have experiments, so don't forget to check out Thunderbird/Experiments
• Our UI/UX team is posting regular updates with images on their tumblr.

Mark Banner (:Standard8) posts updates about branching and releases on his blog. You can also follow him on Twitter.

If you're a tester / want to help

Ludovic Hirlimann (:Usul) is in charge of Thunderbird QA. You can read his blog or follow him on twitter.

• If you're interested in providing support
  • please join the tb-support-crew mailing list.
  • Go and have a look on Get Satisfaction Thunderbird support forum or the unofficial MozillaZine Thunderbird Support forum.
• If you're willing to participate in testing events, the thunderbird-testers mailing list is for you.
• Thunderbird:Testing contains a tremendous amount of information, and should help you getting started if you want to help with quality assurance / testing.
• The MozillaZine Thunderbird Builds forum is a unofficial test community for nightly builds.
• Talking to us here is a very good way to start even if we are slow to answer.

If you're a developer

• You WILL want to hang out on IRC, especially in the #maildev channel. There lies the answer to all of your questions. Plus, the guys are generally friendly. Just ask, and be patient, not all people live in the same timezone.
• mozilla.dev.applications.thunderbird (newsgroup) If you have questions related to extension and/or Thunderbird development, you'll probably find some help here. Also used to discuss various user-related topics/questions.
• There's also AMO forums with a specific Thunderbird section which may be helpful.
• mozilla.dev.extensions (newsgroup) For extension development. Might be better to also post to m.d.a.t if you have a Thunderbird question.
• The Mozilla Developer Center. Don't waste time, just go to the juicy bits:
  • Portal for general Thunderbird info
  • Portal for Thunderbird extension developers
  • How-tos for extension developers
• addons.mozilla.org Has some links too
• Bugzilla is where all the stuff happens. If you're interested in some feature or some development, don't hesitate to CC yourself to the bug if you're interested, and please do check out this hilarious video tutorial about how Bugzilla works, it's really worth it.
• Just for kicks, see what the Thunderbird team is up to using bwinton's reviewer-dashboard.