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!

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 connected 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.

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.

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.

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.

Donate money

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