On Wed, 2025-06-18 at 00:40 +0200, Alex wrote: > > any solutions > > on what the Debian community can do to improve the new contributor > > experience. > > Hi everyone > > I've been following this thread with great interest from the very > beginning and can relate to the many good points raised herein throughout. > > I'll try to make a suggestion as a very new contributor to Debian myself > - so take my thoughts with massive grains of salt :) > > A _part_ of the problem seems to be to provide new contributors an entry > point to the Debian project. Not for a lack of need of things to be done > but because of difficulties in **directing new contributors to > maintainers/maintainer teams who can and are willing to dedicate time to > new contributors** - who, by the nature of things, will require more > guidance and patience. > > As Andreas has mentioned previously in this thread, these kind of > mentoring opportunities exist in Debian. E.g. [0] and [1]. Probably > there are more. My point is: It is hard to find them. Neither the > [Debian > Get Involved][2], nor the - harder to find but more complete - > [How you can help Debian][3] pages mention them. > > [0]: > https://salsa.debian.org/med-team/community/MoM/-/wikis/Mentoring-of-the-Month-(MoM) > [1]: https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2025 > [2]: https://www.debian.org/devel/join/ > [3]: https://www.debian.org/intro/help > > While the OP of this thread managed to create a MR, many potential > contributors will not even get to that point. I doubt that I personally > would have started contributing to Debian if it was not for the highly > structured Google Summer of Code program with a dedicated mentor. Maybe > it is just me, but as a newbie it is still somewhat intimidating to > contribute to a big project like Debian after all. Having an actionable > "Get in touch with Mentoring Project X to start contributing to Debian" > would be helpful in this situation. > > Guiding potential contributors to mentors with the necessary bandwidth > to support newcomers is obviously only a partial solution. Not all new > contributors will need/want mentorship. It will also not help those, who > want a particular bug in a particular package fixed. It will still > require dedication and persistence from new contributors. But matching > those who are willing to contribute with Debian Developers/Maintainers > who are (explicitly) willing to be mentors feels doable. > > I have a feeling that this is a more important factor in attracting new > contributors than having one workflow/tool chain or another. To me, > those are just another thing one might have to learn in the process of > contributing to Debian. > > I'd be happy to add a page on the Debian website or a wiki article > listing the existing mentoring opportunities in Debian if that would > help. Or does a mechanism to discover those exist already and I just > haven't found it?
Hi, Debian Mentors as a sub project of Debian already exists. While generally used for those wishing review and also sponsorship of a package, we also have a mailing list for all those who need help with their existing or new contribution to Debian. We have been open for business for many many years. :-) -- Regards Phil Donate: https://buymeacoffee.com/kathenasorg -- "I play the game for the game’s own sake" Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans -- Website: https://kathenas.org Instagram: https://instagram.com/kathenasorg Internet Relay Chat (IRC): kathenas Matrix: @kathenas:matrix.org --
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