I've been looking for an opportunity to contribute, but I don't have any ELISP skills. This will be great!
-------- Original Message -------- From: Ihor Radchenko <[email protected]> Sent: April 24, 2026 3:05:27 PM CDT To: [email protected] Subject: [ANN] Join Org mode contributor liaison team and help maintaining Org mode 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 live from the field
