I'm following the model that worked well with Marketing and QA, where we have a page for new volunteers to visit that explains the work we do and helps them get started. Then we have a blog post that helps draw them in by explaining why this work is important and fun. And then we link to that blog post on our home page, Facebook page, etc.
So it is four stages: 1) Get their attention on website (750K views per day) 2) Blog post to persuade some subset of them to volunteer (maybe 3000 visits/day) 3) Orientation page to answer the most common questions (Maybe 200 visits/day) 4) And then a subset of those write to the mailing list and volunteer With QA we had over 50 volunteers write to the mailing list and offer to help. I'm willing to help put these pieces together, but I will need help reviewing the material, and especially help with handling the new volunteers at step 4. New volunteers need to be welcomed, their questions answered, and tasks assigned. (At first I thought new volunteers would be offended if you assigned them tasks. It is so "corporate". But if they genuinely want to help, and don't know where to get started, assigning them a task helps them contribute. It is a good thing. If you don't assign them tasks they tend to evaporate. Of course, once a new volunteer gets more familiar with the project they will pick up tasks themselves.) In any case, here is a draft of the orientation page: http://openoffice.apache.org/orientation/intro-doc.html Let me know if there is anything that should be added. Maybe ask yourself: What should every documentation volunteer want to know before getting started? Regards, -Rob
