Hi, Ihor. I'd be happy to help out. I can do a couple a week to start and measure the commitment from there to see if I have the bandwidth to increase.
Cheers, Greg Newman On Fri, Apr 24, 2026 at 4:06 PM Ihor Radchenko <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear all, > > TL;DR: We are looking for volunteers who are ready to help with initial > review of 4 to 8 bugs, patches, or feature requests every month. > No deep Elisp skills required; just being kind. "Initial review" can be > as simple as marking new emails for our bug tracker by replying with > "Confirmed." in email body to bug reports. > > ----- > > For the last couple of years, even before I became the official Org > maintainer, I wanted to make sure that Org mode bugs, patches, and > feature requests that come to the mailing list (and even outside the > mailing list - on Reddit, Emacs China, GitHub, etc) are not left > unanswered. I strongly believe that keeping our user and developer > community connected is the key to keep Org mode live in the long term > [1]. And it worked quite nicely. At least, I am pretty sure that the > overwhelming majority of the requests coming to the mailing list at > least got /some/ answer. If not from me, then from other active community > members, like Pedro A. Aranda, Max Nikulin, Rudolf Adamkovič, Christian > Moe, Sébastien Gendre, Karthik Chikmagalur, Juan Manuel Macías, Derek > Chen-Becker, Morgan Smith, Visuwesh, Jacob S. Gordon, David Masterson, > Leo Butler, Samuel Wales, Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide, Jack Kamm, and > others (yeah, we have many great people here, and this list could > keep going). > > Even with the help of the community, the number of bug reports and > patches coming to the mailing list require considerable time to > process. It was not a problem for the period when I was working on Org > full time, but not now, when I need to balance my main job with the Org > maintenance. I still do manage to handle all the bugs, patches, and > requests coming to the list, but I realized that I do not really have > much time to do anything else. That means - no complex refactoring and > no new features, except contributed by others. > > This made me think of the old idea we had in the past - contributor > liaisons [2]. If we had a couple of volunteers who could commit a few > hours per month to replying to simple bug reports, patches, and feature > requests, it would allow me to focus on more difficult tasks. > > (Side note: the original term was "contributor steward", but the EU > Cyber Resilience Act [3] now gives "open-source software steward" > a specific legal meaning, so I came up with "contributor liaison".) > > ----- > > If you care about Org mode and want to help the community and > development, please volunteer by replying to this email. > > You do not need to have deep Elisp knowledge or commit a lot of free > time. If you are familiar with Org mode, and you are ready to be > welcoming to the contributors, that's good enough. I also expect > regular but small commitment, or a notice if you are unavailable > temporarily or decide to step down (no explanation needed). > > Note that you do not have to commit indefinitely or all year round. Just > let me know about the schedule you are most comfortable with and how > many bugs/patches you are ready to handle (4-8 per month is a good > number). You also do not have to start now; you can just reply and tell > when you can allocate free time. > > There are already a couple of patches and bug reports submitted this > week that need a reply. > > And, of course, if there are any questions, they are always welcome. > > ----- > > Org mode receives around 55 bugs/patches/feature requests every month. > If we have a handful of people helping with 1-2 reports per week, we can > cover most of the reports. > > Before writing this announcement, I prepared detailed instructions about > where to get started and how to review bug reports, patches, and feature > requests. See [4] -- everything can be done with or without Elisp > knowledge, and at various time investments. Every little bit helps. > > I also (secretly) hope that people who volunteer to be contributor > liaisons can eventually (if they wish!) learn more and take on more > serious maintenance work or contribute in other ways. > > [1] https://orgmode.org/worg/org-maintenance.html#community > [2] https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/[email protected]/ > [3] > https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32024R2847#art_3 > [4] https://orgmode.org/worg/org-maintenance.html#liaison -- > the page also links to new detailed sections on handling bug reports > and patches at https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contribute.html > > -- > Ihor Radchenko // yantar92, > Org mode maintainer, > Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>. > Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>, > or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92> > >
