Dear Wikimedia Team, I am Prastut Kumar, a CS undergrad hailing from India and currently

my Bachelors in Computer Science and engineering from VIT University, Chennai Campus. Wikipedia has always been a source of knowledge for people like me

from nations where information, valuable information cannot be found. "Knowledge shared is knowledge earned". Most of the time, while browsing through wiki, I have always thought of donating but couldn't due to economic reasons. But as I was going through GSOC voila! I found wikipedia there and also having separate design

I wish to contribute to the design and aesthetics of the wikimedia

and gain essential skills to pursue my career as a web

expert. I know, I know GSOC has started. But there might be some opportunities

would still be open for a guy like me. I should make this very clear

am solely contributing for the sake of contributing, not with any expectations attached to it. My question to you guys is, from where do I start contributing? How do I begin? Regards Prastut _______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design

from anyone willing to contribute There is no need to be part of GSOC or OPW.

Hi Prastut, MediaWiki (The software Wikipedia uses), is open source, so we accept contributions from anyone willing to contribute. There is no need to be part of GSOC or OPW. The main thing that such programs provide, is a little bit of money, and a lot of structure, which some people find helpful in getting involved. There's some basic information on how to get involved at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker . What the best thing for you to do at the start depends on what sort of skills you have, and where your interests lie. A common good starting point is to find a really easy bug, and try to fix that. There's a list of bugs that some people think are on the easier side at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/o1M_232KG9W4/#R , and some more ui-ish ones at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/search/query/I3ZF1q6NBul0/#R (Be warned, that anyone can mark a bug easy, so sometimes hard bugs get mislabeled as easy, so don't be afraid to try a different bug if the first one you pick seems harder than it looks). Another good approach with open source, is to find something that bothers you about the software currently, and try to fix it (The "so-called" scratch an itch approach). I also strongly encourage you to (if you're not already) subscribe to wikitech-l mailing list. This is the general mailing list for mediawiki development. I also encourage you to frequent the #mediawiki irc channel on irc.freenode.net. People at #mediawiki can be very helpful if you run into any problems, and you can learn a lot from just passive listening. Cheers, bawolff On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 7:40 AM, Prastut Kumar <kr.prastut(a)gmail.com> wrote: pursuing hailing through section! project developer-cum-UI/UX which that I _______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design