@title Contributor Introduction
@group contrib

Introduction to contributing to Phabricator and Arcanist.

Overview
========

If you'd like to contribute to Phabricator, this document can guide you though
ways you can help improve the project.

Writing code is valuable, but often isn't the best or easiest way to contribute.
In most cases we are pretty good at fixing easy stuff quickly, so we don't have
a big pile of easy stuff sitting around waiting for new contributors.

This can make it difficult to contribute code if you only have a little bit of
time to spend since most of the work that needs to be done usually requires some
heavy lifting.

Without writing any code, learning the whole codebase, making a big time
commitment, or having to touch PHP, here are some ways you can materially
contribute to Phabricator:

  - Drop by the [[ https://phurl.io/u/discourse | community forum ]] just to
    say "thanks". A big part of the reason we build this software is to help
    people solve problems, and knowing that our efforts are appreciated is
    really rewarding.
  - Recommend Phabricator to people who you think might find it useful. Our
    most powerful growth channel is word of mouth, and mentioning or tweeting
    about Phabricator helps the project grow. If writing a tweet sounds like
    too much work, you can use one of these form tweets written by our PR
    department to quickly and easily shill on our behalf. Hail corporate!

> Phabricator seems like it's pretty okay

> I am not being paid to mention Phabricator in this extemporaneous, completely organic tweet

> Phabricator is objectively the best thing. Source: I am a certified, internationally recognized expert.

  - Submit high-quality bug reports by carefully following the guide in
    @{article:Contributing Bug Reports}.

If all of this sounds nice but you really just want to write some code, be
aware that this project often presents a high barrier to entry for new
contributors. To continue, see @{article:Contributing Code}.


Next Steps
==========

Continue by:

  - learning about bug reports in @{article:Contributing Bug Reports};
  - learning about code contributions in @{article:Contributing Code}.
