How to contribute

MediaWiki is a free/libre and open source software effort that relies on many types of contributions from different people. The MediaWiki community is a great place to learn, collaborate, meet interesting people and be part of something BIG. Join us!



Landing
This is what most MediaWiki contributors do in their first day:


 * Subscribe to mediawiki-l mailing list (English only) and perhaps more.
 * Join IRC channel (English only) and perhaps more.
 * Make sure you have an email confirmed and email notifications enabled in your mediawiki.org preferences.
 * "Watch" (click the star icon of) the pages you want to follow and perhaps contribute to.
 * All the better if you find a MediaWiki Group that matches your location or interests!

Software development
The MediaWiki community is maintaining more than 5 million lines of code, and counting. Become a MediaWiki developer. Code contributions are welcome!
 * Use the MediaWiki API in your applications (e.g. to access Wikipedia data) and give us feedback.
 * MediaWiki core and extensions. PHP knowledge required. Check How to become a MediaWiki hacker and the Developer hub.
 * Write enhancements in the form of small shareable user scripts and gadgets written in Javascript.
 * Coming soon: write templates and ParserFunctions with Lua scripting.
 * Multimedia developers are very welcome to Media Projects.
 * Mobile developers are welcome to Mobile Projects.

Translate

 * Translate content on this wiki. See Project:Language policy, or just go to the translator dashboard and start translating (tutorial)!
 * Help maintain interface translations: they are enormously useful. See Localisation.
 * Meet the Wikimedia Foundation Language team and contribute to their projects.

Testing

 * Report bugs (English only)! If something doesn't work as it should, don't just ignore it – make sure it's reported.
 * Sort bugzilla reports (English only).
 * Help improving our automated testing and continuous integration processes.

Design
All our graphics assets are licensed under open licenses. All our user interface software is developed publicly in open source projects.


 * Join the Design mailing list.
 * Learn about the Wikimedia Foundation Design team and how to give design feedback.
 * Projects at the User experience review queue welcome your feedback.
 * Help with Micro Design Improvements.
 * Get involved in projects like Mobile design, Flow or Onboarding new Wikipedians.
 * Contribute to UX improvements to translation workflows.
 * Work on MediaWiki skins like Athena or Vector, used by Wikipedia.

System administration
Wikipedia is one of the top 5 sites of the Internet and it runs on MediaWiki software. Sysadmins willing to contribute are welcome!


 * Check the Sysadmin hub.
 * Get a Wikimedia Labs instance to experiment.
 * Meet the system administrators running the Wikimedia servers.

Help others learn about MediaWiki
Help answer other people's questions about MediaWiki. Also, if you encounter a problem and figure out how to fix it, share the information. This can happen in different places.
 * On the communication venues mentioned above.
 * On the support desk.
 * On this wiki's help and manual pages, see following section. Installation and upgrading instructions and tips are usually the most wanted.

Improve MediaWiki's documentation

 * If you are familiar with a MediaWiki feature, improve its documentation on this wiki! Take screenshots, provide examples, etc. See Project:PD help for guidance.
 * Help out on maintenance tasks for this wiki.

Donate money

 * Many core MediaWiki developers are employed by the Wikimedia Foundation, which is a not-for-profit organization. Please consider donating.