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
Host Events
Consider having an offline or online event to get people interested in your project together to work on something specific, to plan or just to socialize.
Examples:
Create A New User Flow
Consider mapping out how someone interested in your project can find out about contribution opportunities and how to start working on a project. Wiki pages and blog posts are important parts of this, but how will people find those and what
Clarify Ownership
Consider having a very clear understanding of people's roles and of what they own to avoid situations where opportunities are missed when people assume someone else will respond or take care of it.
It is true that it is everyone's responsibility in Mozilla to help bring new people into the project, but that's not to say their aren't specific areas that need to be owned by specific people (eg, who in your project makes a point of staying in an IRC channel to answer questions people may have?).
Don't Get Discouraged
Helping people get involved with Mozilla (or with any volunteer activity) is hard work and you're likely going to fail more often than you'll succeed. Information from traditional non-profits suggest that we should expect a 1 in 10 success rate for bringing on new contributors.
Another thing to keep in mind is that there is a big learning curve and it might take someone a fair amount of time before they start contributing (another reason to create easy ways for people to make their first contribution instead of someone needing to get source code, build it on their machine, find a bug, create a patch, file a bug and then find a reviewer for their first contribution).
So that's all to say, don't get discouraged :)