Take the WordPress Contributor Experience Survey

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If you’ve ever contributed to the WordPress project, whether through code, documentation, plugins and themes, speaking at a WordCamp, etc., your feedback is requested on the WordPress Contributor Experience Survey. Jen Mylo announced the survey today, noting that none of the questions are mandatory.

One of the questions in the survey asks: “What can the WordPress project do to make current contributors feel valued?” Since the vast majority of community contributions to the project are done on a volunteer basis, the project is seeking feedback for recognizing and valuing those efforts.

Recent and continued improvements to WordPress.org profiles present a more accurate representation of a user’s involvement in the project and recognize users with badges that denote contributions to code, plugins, themes, WordCamps, as well as active participation in the groups listed on make.wordpress.org. Do these badges resonate with contributors or are there more creative ways that the project can help them feel valued?

Helping New Contributors Feel Welcome and Encouraged

Another important question on the survey asks what the WordPress project can do better to make new contributors feel welcome and encouraged. Getting a better handle on this could potentially help the project expand its contributor base and move forward at a faster rate. This past year WordPress has launched several new initiatives targeted at improving new contributors’ experiences.

Recent updates to WordPress core trac, as well as the components reorganization, have gone a long way toward helping contributors to specialize and stay informed on selected tickets. The addition of the “good-first-bug” keyword helps to streamline areas where new contributors might get their feet wet.

In addition to helping new code contributors, the WordCamp Organizer Hangouts have been instrumental in getting new organizers oriented with the responsibilities of leading an event. A preliminary version of a new issues tracker for WordPress documentation was recently launched and will be refined to help documentation contributors work together more efficiently. However, there are many more areas where contributors might jump in that have not yet been optimized for newcomers.

The survey asks for feedback on user experiences contributing to the project, both positive and negative. If you have any thoughts on how WordPress can improve these experiences, take a few minutes to communicate your feedback via the Contributor Experience Survey.