If You Want to Contribute to Paragraph.xyz, Here’s Where You Can Start

Some people are really interested in contributing to the open source project for some reason. Taken from We Are Open’s blog, there are at least ten reasons why people want to contribute to the open source project:

1. Altruism (e.g. doing pro bono work to make the world a better place)

2. Gaining skills/experience (e.g. developing competencies that will help their career)

3. Giving back to the community (e.g. adding a feature or performing a code review because they use the software every day and want to help out)

4. Paid work (e.g. they’re employed to design the UI for an Open Source project)

5. Participating in competitions (e.g. Hack days)

6. Political/social motivations (e.g. feeling empowered by moving forward with a particular agenda)

7. Reputation and recognition (e.g. building a rounded GitHub portfolio in preparation for applying for jobs)

8. Scratching an itch (e.g. fixing a bug that’s been irritating them)

9. Side projects (e.g. they have a boring day job and want to feel more fulfilled)

10. Working with others (e.g. collaborating with people outside of their geographic area or sector)

Paragraph.xyz itself is not an open source project as the company does not release the source code of any of its services. However, the good news is that the documentation is open source, and we can contribute to it.

Colin Armstrong, the Founder of Paragraph.xyz, made an announcement on the Discord channel that the documentation of Paragraph.xyz is open source, and all Paragraph.xyz’s users are encouraged to contribute to it.

Who is using Paragraph.xyz?

When the first time I joined the Discord community, I thought I’ll see a lot of tech junkies (developers, geeks, hackers, you name it) in the community. My expectation was set knowing that Paragraph.xyz is a Web3-enabled publishing platform and the people who joined would not be far from Web3 technology.

I was so wrong.

While I do not have the exact demographic data for all of the users, when I read in the #writing channel on Discord, there are artists and other non-Web3 publications as well. Oh, and by artists, it does not only people who create graphical art but also poems, fiction stories, and other forms of art.

Contributing to Paragraph.xyz’s Documentation

Contributing to Paragraph.xyz’s documentation requires extensive knowledge of Git, Markdown editing, and Node.js environment. I will not cover the whole process, but here is what to do if you want to contribute to this project:

Fork this repository https://github.com/paragraph-xyz/docs to your Github account.

Clone the documentation from your Github account.

Create a new local branch.

Write down your changes.

Push the changes to your forked repository.

Send a pull request to the main Paragraph.xyz repository (not your forked repository).

If your changes are approved, the Paragraph.xyz team will merge your pull request.

When sending your pull request, please bear in mind that the repository owner or other contributors may add review comments, contribute to the pull request discussion, add commits to the pull request, and even refuse/reject your pull request. Do not be discouraged if your changes are rejected. At this stage, you are already doing your best to contribute to this project. Listen to the feedback, and you can send another pull request.

Join the Discord Community

If you want to, you can also join the Paragraph. xyz community on Discord. Click this link to join the community: https://discord.gg/AeVZWtK5TT.

Disclaimer: This is a copied post from my Paragraph.xyz account that was posted on August 17, 2022. I'm going to unpublish that post and use it for a different purpose.