Jeff Warnica wrote:
Greets all. Id like to begin contributing, in a
technical fashion to
wikipedia, and this seems like the place to start.
At heart, Im a sysadmin, but to start out (especially in isolation), the
best way seems programming work on mediawiki. Be it squashing bugs, or
implementing new features, Id like to help. Unfortunately, while Ive
contributed some content, Im not overtly involved in wikipedia: thus I
dont know if on Sourceforge bugs are really bugs, and RFE are wanted by
more then one person - I don't want to waste anyones time by working on
things that wouldnt be accepted. Thus, I ask: what would be some tasks
that I could cut my teeth on?
Please join the #mediawiki channel on
irc.freenode.net. If you're
prepared to keep an IRC window open in the background and check it
occasionally while you do other work, you can use your sysadmin skills
immediately by offering advice. This also allows you to start building
trust with the other developers, which is very important if you want to
obtain shell access at some later date. On IRC we can also give you
programming advice.
Fixing bugs is great too, but it's really better if you do both. Many
bug reports we get are not really repeatable in a test installation, and
can only be fixed by mucking around in the live database.
Sourceforge is a good place to look for bugs, and Brion does a lot of
work categorising them and clearing them. There are also numerous
locations scattered across the wiki where bugs are reported. These fall
into two categories: community pages like the village pump, where users
complain about problems to each other, and bug reports pages, which are
often created by users without making them known to all the developers.
And then of course if you're a well known developer, you'll get bug
reports directly via email and IRC.
-- Tim Starling