Informal Thoughts
It is important to be clear to a community that non-code contributions are welcomed and useful. If non-code contributions aren’t made, a project won’t be very useful because (no offence(to me)) people who are good at coding usually aren’t good at communiting so things like documentation, tutorials, the licence etc. won’t be as good as if someone more experieinced in that field contributed that.
Without non-code contributions, a project is basically just some code and maybe some small instructions for how to use it and it is very unlikely that the project will last long outside of the founder updating it. When there is a lot of documentation, a forum to speak in, tutorials and legal help, it will often have a long life and code contributions are more likely as possible contributors can easily identify the needs of the community therefore make the most efficient contributions.
Finally, when there is a lot of effort put into the accessibility the project can encourage a wide range of opinions therefore have the best contributions.
Non-code contributions
Community
Contributions to a project can also be related to the community, which doesn’t have to be in github. Many open source projects have their own messaging community outside of github e.g. discord. Therefore, it is useful to the community to have someone to manage these messaging systems. This is also made more important because these forums of dicussion can be used by community members to discuss all sorts of things related to the project, including possible bugs or even ideas for where to take the projects.
Documentation
This is related to tutorials but not the same, it is important to include documentation for a project for accesibiliy. When first using a project, you need to know how it works and how to use/download it therefore good documentation can make a project more popular.
Translation of said doumentation is also important for acessibility. If good translation is provided, not only will the project have a wider range of users but it will also have a higher quality of code contributions for obvious reasons.
Tutorials
Tutorials are important to projects, especially when most of the work is done by the user e.g. p5.js. A large community of tutorials create a lower barrier to entry and encourage users to explore all features of the software. Tutorials can also communicate to the founder features that are most commonly used and possible pain points with the user that they might not have seen. By making more advanced features more accessible, tutorials further foster community as well as sustained engagement of the user-base.
Legal
Although the legal issues that the average project runs into may not be extremely complicated, the knowlage of even what licence to use is a very useful non-code contribution. As mentioned, the average coder might not be knowlagable about what licence will be most appropriate for a specific project (because that isn’t their proffession so it can be expected that they won’t have any legal knowlage) so to have someone who udnerstand the project to give advice about this will be extremely valuable. Adding on to the documentation part, it is also useful to have someone familiar with ‘legalise’ to write the legal documentation, especially if stipulations are made that differ from the normal licences.
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