It has been most of a year since we’ve held a virtual doc sprint for Mozilla Developer Network. (The last one was in January 2012.) A lot has happened in that time, most significantly, the switch to the new Kuma platform, and the steady addition of features to Kuma since its launch. So, let’s round out the year with one more sprint. (For those who don’t know what a doc sprint is, it’s a short period when we have a concentrated effort by a number of people to improve the documentation on MDN.)
You don’t have to write whole new articles (though that’s fantastic). You can also update existing articles, or add browser compatibility info. Many articles are tagged as needing help. MDN doc sprints usually focus on docs for Web standards, since that’s fairly easy for Web developers to contribute to. But you’re also welcome to help with docs for new Mozilla technologies, like Firefox OS, Open Web Apps, or Persona; or help document the Mozilla project, such as building, testing, or localizing Mozilla code.
In fact, you can even write code instead of text! Now that MDN supports live examples, we need to either adapt existing code examples to be live, or create new ones.
You can participate from wherever you are, whenever is convenient for you. The sprint runs Friday to Saturday (or Saturday to Sunday for those in Asia-Pacific time zones), so jump in any time during that span. Track this and other MDN-related events on the MDN Community calendar.
We use the #devmo channel on irc.mozilla.org to coordinate. We’ll also have an optional Google hangout, for those who want to watch one another type on their keyboards :-) See the planning page on the wiki to read further details and share your ideas.
Get some Mozilla gear
Make a non-trivial contribution during the sprint, and you can get a t-shirt (or other gear if you don’t want a t-shirt). Honestly, non-trivial means “not much more than trivial.”
Other doc sprints
Our friends over at Web Platform Docs have also adopted the doc sprint model as a great way to get loads of work done in a short time. Earlier this month, Web Platform Docs held its first doc sprint, hosted by Adobe, which was very successful, with over 50 participants making over 800 changes to the site.
The next doc sprint for Web Platform Docs is coming up on December 12, hosted by Google, which you can attend in person if you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, or online otherwise. If you’re curious about contributing to WPD, this would be a great time to try it out.
Whichever sprint you join in, you’ll be helping make the Web more awesome for Web developers!
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