Volunteering

Dreamwidth places a big emphasis on its volunteers, who can help in a variety of areas across the site. For information on why we think volunteers are awesome, you can read the page about our Volunteer philosophy and the Guide to happy and effective volunteering.

We welcome all volunteers who want to contribute to Dreamwidth and have a commitment to Inclusiveness.

General Volunteering Information

If you want to volunteer in any area where you will produce code or text for the site (FAQs etc.), you will need to fill out a Contributor Licensing Agreement.

There are several areas in which we need volunteers. Information on who leads the projects and how they can be contacted can generally be accessed on the Project Teams page.

See also Volunteer Opportunities.

Some areas are suitable for just diving right in and getting started without many formalities.

Some areas need a little more interaction to get started effectively.

Accessibility

Accessibility on Dreamwidth is the process of making the site and everything related to it accessible to everyone, no matter their requirements. The official LJ community for that project is dw_accessibility.

Anti-Spam

We are trying to keep Dreamwidth as clear from spam as possible. This means that all reports of spam should be seen to as quickly as possible, to help avoid spammers gaining a toehold in the site. This project's official community is located at dw_antispam, and instructions for application are on the community profile.

Spamwhacking Team

No CLA is required for membership on this team. Review by team leaders and spamwhacker privs are required in order to deal with spam reports.

Addition of new anti-spam team members is sporadic and generally based on current spam volume, and when the volume of spam exceeds the capacity of the current active volunteers. This does mean that it may be a long time between application for the team and any review or response.

Duties of anti-spam team members:

• Review reports of spam (comments, community entries, or private messages) deleted-and-marked-as-spam
• Determine whether any given report is or is not spam, in accordance with Dreamwidth's rules & team guidelines
• Take appropriate action on reports that are determined to be spam
• Pass along non-spam that is nonetheless actionable under the Terms of Service (such as solicitation for account trades)
• Close non-actionable non-spam (such as mistaken reports or unwanted contact) with no action
• Notice and pass along anything that requires action from a team lead or higher

The spamwhacking process is repetitive and fussy, which means it can be either soothing or tedious depending on personal reactions to fussy repetitive routines.

Non-Team Spam-fighting Actions

• Delete-and-mark-as-spam any spam comments left in journals or communities you control, as promptly as practical.
• Much of the comment spam left on Dreamwidth is anonymous; if you are comfortable turning off or automatically screening anonymous comments in your space, this will eliminate much of the spam you receive.
• If you know you will be away for an extended period of time, consider turning off anonymous comments in your absence.
• If you encounter spam journals, file a support request in the Anti-Spam category so an Anti-Spam team lead or Terms of Service member can take care of them.

Places to look for spam journals:

• on the Latest Things page
• on the Stats page with newly created journals
• through site search, looking for commonly spammed terms, or words associated with a current spam campaign

Documentation

Documentation involves working on site documentation, like FAQs.

The Dreamwidth community for beginning documentation volunteers is dw_docs_training.

Anyone can point out areas of the site which are not documented, or where the documentation is out of date, incorrect, or could be better.

If you submit draft documentation, plan to submit a CLA so it can be used.

A documentation team lead or site admin will review all submitted documentation for accuracy and adherence to the site documentation style, and edit as needed before posting.

Development

This involves working on the code Dreamwidth is based on. You can find out information about this in the Development category, specifically in the Dev Getting Started article. For non-coding involvement with development, see How to do a Code Tour.

The Dreamwidth community for beginning development volunteers is dw_dev_training, which includes a masterlist of bugs for beginners. The dedicated IRC channel is #dreamwidth-dev.

Styles

Styles encompasses things like designing new layouts for Dreamwidth, creating mood themes, documentation of existing styles, and so forth. Dreamwidth's styles team community is located at dw_styles.

You can get more information at the Styles and Design Getting Started page.

Support

Dreamwidth's Support Board is an area that's run by volunteers. If you want to start answering questions, reading the Support guide is recommended. A Getting Started page is in the works - for the time being, if you'd like more detail your best bet is to grab someone in IRC, including the specific project channel #dreamwidth-support.

The Dreamwidth community for beginning support volunteers is dw_support_training.

Wiki

This wiki is designed to be a helpful resource for people wanting to use Dreamwidth, help with Dreamwidth, or read about Dreamwidth. Wiki Getting Started is an introduction to wikis as a concepts; the Wiki Tasklist contains small repeating tasks, and a list of larger projects. The dw_wiki community also lists official tasks.

Other than that, if you have knowledge about any specific area related to Dreamwidth, feel free to look around the site and dive in.