jquery/learn.jquery.com — Issue #46: New Contributors - Contribution Guide/Discussion
Author: addyosmani
Created: 2012-02-08 02:05:13+00:00
State: open

For those interested in contributing to the upcoming jQuery Learning site, welcome!

As you might guess, this is a project focused on creating an authoritative educational resource for those wishing to learn how to use jQuery, ranging from beginners to more advanced users. It's being driven by the jQuery project and we hope that you'll consider contributing some of your time to helping us improve the content we have at the moment and appreciate any of your efforts.

Some history:
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The site initially started off with Rebecca Murphey's jQuery Fundamentals book (which we gave us permission to use) and split it up into individual sections which were then iterated upon and improved in some areas over the past few months. Articles from those in the community who wanted to contribute were in places integrated and the current progress/state of the site can be seen here:

http://stage.learn.jquery.com/

Now, there are a few problems with the content we've got at the moment.

* While much of it made sense in the context of jQF, there are areas that are seriously lacking material and need to be fleshed out further. I've been taking charge lately of reviewing these sections and identifying what needs to be changed. Ajax is an example of one such section: https://github.com/jquery/learn.jquery.com/issues/38 as are the jQuery basics https://github.com/jquery/learn.jquery.com/issues/40

* Although we have permission to use articles from a number of sources, I would say that the book in it's current form isn't an accurate representation of the latest version of jQuery. We need a lot more work covering everything from Deferreds through to attributes/props, on/off and a lot more. The release changelogs on http://blog.jquery.com might help here for anyone wondering what changed.

* Again, although we have permission to use other people's articles, it doesn't mean that a good article is up to date or reflects the latest best practices. I also think we may need to spend more time fleshing out basics sections like the JavaScript 101

So, how can you help?
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We need developers who are either experienced with technical writing or are willing to try their hand at it to take a look at the content we have at the moment and help improve it. If you see a section you feel could be addressed better and would like to get involved, why not open up a new issue, fork the project and keep us updated on your progress improving a section? :) You'll be helping a potentially large number of developers get to grips with the library and it's an excellent way to sharpen your existing skills.

Some notes:

* If you would like to contribute, forks and pull requests are the best way to do this
* Should you find an article out there at the moment you feel would be worth incorporating in your pull request, please ensure that you clearly state a) the URL the article came from, b) the original author. This is needed so that we can request permission to use it directly
* All pull requests will be technically reviewed for accuracy by either me or another member of the team. We may ask that you tweak a submission if there are errors found.
* We currently have an extensive amount of work being done on the site infrastructure (i.e how the markdown files are being converted, imported, handled etc) so please only change the markdown files themselves and nothing else

How is this different to the jQuery docs?:

Most of this is best addressed in the following thread: https://github.com/jquery/learn.jquery.com/issues/39

Anything else you need to know
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We've covered the major points above but some developers have asked us about timelines. At the moment we probably have a few months to get everything in the project tidied up, but there's a lot of work we need to get through during that time. If you would like to tweak your skills and think you could contribute improvements to the project, please feel free to send us through pull requests.

We've happy to take any questions in this thread (or even comments if you'd like to let us know you want to work on something).

This page will be getting moved to the wiki shortly, but thanks to anyone willing to get involved. We appreciate it!