How to Contribute to the Fediverse as a Non-Developer?

Community
#1

I’m just brainstorming some ways to contribute to the fediverse without being a developer:

  • Donate. To software projects and instance hosts.
  • Help translate projects. Here is a list.
  • Write articles and guides about the fediverse.
  • Ask your family and friends to join and share how you convinced them here.
  • Convince institutions, groups and influencers to join.
  • Ask your local newspaper to write an article about the fedi.
  • Design and print flyers, stickers, info-sheets, posters, …
  • Post interesting stuff and be kind to other fedizens.
  • Help moderate the fedi. Report harmful posts, users and instances to your instance moderators and to FediBlock.
  • Help make the fediverse a more diverse and safe place by educating yourself e.g. about racism. Further reading.
  • Host your own instance. Its really easy.

What else can you think of?

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#2

Some more:

  • Don’t be shy to provide feedback to those who are developers. They really need your input wherever you can give it!
  • Dogfood the fediverse. Use it as much as you can, and let others know that you do (e.g. refer to it in your other channels).
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#3

Whats the best way to do that?
I’m not someone who can write good bug reports or feature requests in github or similar sites, but when posting about issues or feature wishes on forums you usually get directed to the issue tracker.
And I guess writing to the developers in the fediverse is not the best idea either.

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#4

I deliberately mentioned “don’t be shy”, because raising your voice in whatever way is key. For non-technical people you don’t need to phrase eloquent feature requests. As fedizen you use the apps, they are create for you, and part of the task of the developer is to gather your input and act on it (given they align with project direction/objectives).

If you encounter a toot by a dev, e.g. announcing a new feature, then don’t hesitate to respond… “Can I also do this and that?”, or “You might add so and so to it”. Be kind and the devs will appreciate your participation. Also invoke their names i.e. “In @thisdev #theirproject I’d be great to see [this feature]” kind of toots, giving them the choice to jump in or not.

For more elaborate fedi discussions you can participate on SocialHub. There’s the Fediverse Futures category, for instance, that is less technical in orientation. And - related to that - there’s the Lemmy companion space Fediverse Futures is completely non-technical and dedicated to freely brainstorm about anything fedi-related.

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#5

I agree with @aschrijver. Don’t be shy.
I have had lots of doubts too when I wrote my first bug reports and it can be discouraging when your issue is closed, marked as a duplicate or your post is edited to read something completely different.
But that’s just how that works and you shouldn’t get discouraged by that. Also you’ll get better at writing bug reports by doing it.

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#6

I’d add that you don’t need to be a developer to be a maintainer. I’m actually looking for someone to help maintain a couple projects and I don’t expect them to code or even read code. Just to enforce some rules.

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#7

Another example to follow-up on @weex comment:

The FedeProxy project has a need for various non-developer related tasks, like helping to spread their messages far and wide. They are doing very important work: Trying to interconnect Github, Gitlab, Gitea and other code forges on the Fediverse, so that it doesn’t matter where source code is hosted. Their project allows decentralized collaboration of open source projects across the fedi, and will help break the dominance of Github.

For instance they have a paid grant (5k Euro) to do a Diversity study, to help them build their open community. It does not require coding skills (but you do need to know how FOSS projects are managed). There is another grant proposal too. What is needed are people who can review and improve the texts i.e. editor / authoring skills.

If you find FedeProxy or similar projects important, I encourage to just join the community and announce: “I am non-technical, but how can I help”. There’s much to learn by doing so, and also for the techies, who often lack specific skills that you can bring to the table.

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#8

The first thing i did was spreading it :joy::+1:

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