As a part of a larger effort to be more involved in the WordPress community as a whole, I’m now trying to set aside at least half my workday every Thursday to focus on core contribution.
Compared to most, that’s not much, I know. I’m always in awe of how much time and energy is volunteered daily by such talented folks. I know that’s been said a thousand times, but it’s no less true.
I’ve been held back holding myself back from regular contributions for quite a while. It’s always seemed futile to me to jump into an ongoing code discussion and have anything of value to offer. But that’s just my insecurity with a little dab of “imposter syndrome” talking. I’m starting to learn that making development contributions to WordPress doesn’t usually start with declaring “I’m going reinvent the media editor!” or “Time to give back by writing a new Settings API!”
The fact is that there is so much that can be done. Documentation, support, spelling errors, etc… Thanks to help from the great folks at WordCamp Seattle this year, I submitted a small inline documentation ticket & patch. It was such a small contribution, but it was something. And that small something opened up the door a little bit to me realizing that this core contribution thing doesn’t have to be so damn daunting.
Hey, it’s a start.