[Marketing] getting involved: doing us a favor

[Mel Chua]

Inspired by a discussion with Caroline on IRC the other day.

I was looking at 
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Getting_Involved, and... I think 
my biggest comment is "how can the page be designed so as to make it 
clear that they're doing us a favor - not an imposition - by participating?"

Several years back, I met a professor once who was writing a textbook 
and beta-testing it with his class, who would have the homework of 
reading it and working problems. Not unusual. The interesting thing was 
that the assignments were phrased something like this: "I'm writing this 
textbook, and would love reviews; your assignment is to look at this and 
point out my mistakes, where I'm being confusing, where the problems 
aren't teaching you the material effectively - you're the expert on what 
makes a textbook good for you."

He said he got far better - and far more - responses than the usual 
"this is your homework; do these problems." The implied subtext to that, 
especially for some newbies, is "and if you have a hard time, it's 
because you're dumb, because We Know Stuff and our materials are Perfect."

So how can we make it clear that beginning participation and telling us 
about the questions and the troubles that they have in contributing 
isn't any trouble for us - and that in fact, we really like it?

--Mel