Feature added by: Simon Chew (ChewEngineer) Feature #310881, revision 1 Title: Making it easier to help openSUSE.org: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Simon Chew (chewengineer) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: I propose that we need to make joining the project a more personal experience. Too many of the suggested means of communicating are very faceless and impersonal. This is even more important if the community wishes for non-technical contributions to the project (e.g. backgrounds, sound files, colour schemes etc.) When I try to get involved with the project, I am directed to either an IRC channel or a mailing list. Whilst there is nothing wrong with using these technologies, a lot of users are simply not familiar or comfortable with these ways of communicating. In particular a mailing list is confusing because (outside the project) mailing lists tend to be non-reply only. In addition, some of the links no longer function Suggestions for improvement: 1. A very visible single point of contact e.g. a giant button on every community page saying "Want to help? Don't know how to start?" This would link to a contact form that would allow the user to select project areas they are interested in and then contact the relevant team. 2. Could we use social networking tech e.g. Facebook to allow people to comment and communicate using methods that they are familiar with? A lot of newer users have never used IRC or mailing lists and may not even know what they are. 3. Re-vamp the Suse Art site. It's looking a little bedraggled and there doesn't seem to be much activity. If users felt they could upload contributions easily to a site and that those contributions had a good chance of making it into the project they might be more willing to participate. 4. Improving the visibility of the project within the OS itself e.g. obvious menu links that will submit contact forms (and perhaps files) to the project with minimal effort. 5. Make any information for new user much more prominent and much easier to find. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/310881