Quoting Angela Fuß (angela.fuss@das-netzwerkteam.de):
> What sort of non-technical contributions would that be if I would want to be Debian Developer? What is possible and what is needed?
> Are these contributions not already there and seen and appreciated?
> Does Debian need more non-technical contribution or more appreciation of this sort of contribution? Or both?
> I have not got the skills to contribute technically but I am interested in the well-being of the Debian community as a user and a person who enrols others to use Debian, especially Debian Edu.
Hello Angela,
We have many areas where so-called "non technical" contributions are
welcomed. To name a few:
- Debian website maintenance (see debian-www@lists.debian.org): there
are technical aspects here, but also a lot of work monitoring
requests, suggestions, working on some pages, site maintenance,
coordinating translation work
- Debian "publicity" team: the team working on any kind of
publications made by the project, such as Debian News, official
announcements. Needs help on coordinating work, backuping those who
are doing the work currently (many areas in Debian constantly require
"new blood" because people's involvment in tasks vary over time)
- Debian events organization : the annual DebConf is an example and
the most visible one, but several other side events happen and require
a lot of involvment from many people to make them happen, talk about
them, report about them, etc.
- Translation work : it's often the one cited first (which is why I
took care to not do it again). Participating to a translation team in
your language and help on translation, review, maintenance of the many
parts in the project where localization is involved (wesite again,
packages, Debian News and announcements, etc.) Even those of us with
English as native language can help, through the debian-l10n-english
mailing list where most "review" work of many kind of texts is done
- Debian QA work : it's kinda "technical" but here again, there are
many tasks where a motivated helper with "just enough" background on
some technical aspects of the project can help a lot
And I certainly forget many others..:-)
You mention "Are these contributions not already there and seen and
appreciated?". Probably yes, but there is always more work to do than
people to do it. Also, as I mention above, things are always changing
in Debian world. People's commitment and involvment varies over time
and the facts show that we always need new people to show up and
gradually take over what is done by long-term contributors (many have
their centers of itnerest changing over time).
I personnally never made a mystery of my opinion that were slowing
down at having more new contributors, during last years. Some people
disagree with that analysis and find it a bit pessimistic but, anyway,
we all agree that a motivated new contributor will always find her
place in the Debian ecosystem.
What you should NOT expect is finding someone helping you to find this
or telling you "eh, you could work on ${THIS}". In short, you should
go towards the work you want to do and not wait for it to find
you...:-). But I guess you understood that already.
And Debian Women is a good place to talk about this as we have,
around, several people involved in the abovementioned "non technical"
tasks, who are lurking on this mailing list.
I hope this somehow long and quite bubullish mail answers some of your
questions!
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