-CONTRIBUTING
+Contributing
============
-There are three ways in which you can contribute to this repository:
+Thank you for considering contributing to Mastodon 🐘
-1. By improving the documentation
-2. By working on the back-end application
-3. By working on the front-end application
+You can contribute in the following ways:
-Choosing what to work on in a large open source project is not easy. The list of [GitHub issues](https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues) may provide some ideas, but not every feature request has been greenlit. Likewise, not every change or feature that resolves a personal itch will be merged into the main repository. Some communication ahead of time may be wise. If your addition creates a new feature or setting, or otherwise changes how things work in some substantial way, please remember to submit a correlating pull request to document your changes in the [documentation](http://github.com/tootsuite/documentation).
+- Finding and reporting bugs
+- Translating the Mastodon interface into various languages
+- Contributing code to Mastodon by fixing bugs or implementing features
+- Improving the documentation
-Below are the guidelines for working on pull requests:
+If your contributions are accepted into Mastodon, you can request to be paid through [our OpenCollective](https://opencollective.com/mastodon).
-## General
+## Bug reports
-- 2 spaces indentation
+Bug reports and feature suggestions must use descriptive and concise titles and be submitted to [GitHub Issues](https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues). Please use the search function to make sure that you are not submitting duplicates, and that a similar report or request has not already been resolved or rejected.
-## Documentation
-
-- No spelling mistakes
-- No orthographic mistakes
-- No Markdown syntax errors
+## Translations
-## Requirements
+You can submit translations via [Crowdin](https://crowdin.com/project/mastodon). They are periodically merged into the codebase.
-- Ruby
-- Node.js
-- PostgreSQL
-- Redis
-- Nginx (optional)
+[](https://crowdin.com/project/mastodon)
-## Back-end application
+## Pull requests
-It is expected that you have a working development environment set up. The development environment includes [rubocop](https://github.com/bbatsov/rubocop), which checks your Ruby code for compliance with our style guide and best practices. Sublime Text, likely like other editors, has a [Rubocop plugin](https://github.com/pderichs/sublime_rubocop) that runs checks on files as you edit them. The codebase also has a test suite.
+Please use clean, concise titles for your pull requests. We use commit squashing, so the final commit in the master branch will carry the title of the pull request.
-* The codebase is not perfect, at the time of writing, but it is expected that you do not introduce new code style violations
-* The rspec test suite must pass
-* To the extent that it is possible, verify your changes. In the best case, by adding new tests to the test suite. At the very least, by running the server or console and checking it manually
-* If you are introducing new strings to the user interface, they must be using localization methods
+The smaller the set of changes in the pull request is, the quicker it can be reviewed and merged. Splitting tasks into multiple smaller pull requests is often preferable.
-If your code has syntax errors that won't let it run, it's a good sign that the pull request isn't ready for submission yet.
+**Pull requests that do not pass automated checks may not be reviewed**. In particular, you need to keep in mind:
-## Front-end application
+- Unit and integration tests (rspec, jest)
+- Code style rules (rubocop, eslint)
+- Normalization of locale files (i18n-tasks)
-It is expected that you have a working development environment set up (see back-end application section). This project includes an ESLint configuration file, with which you can lint your changes.
-
-* Avoid grave ESLint violations
-* Verify that your changes work
-* If you are introducing new strings, they must be using localization methods
+## Documentation
-If the JavaScript or CSS assets won't compile due to a syntax error, it's a good sign that the pull request isn't ready for submission yet.
+The [Mastodon documentation](https://docs.joinmastodon.org) is a statically generated site. You can [submit merge requests to mastodon/docs](https://source.joinmastodon.org/mastodon/docs).