Thunderbird/CommunicationChannels: Difference between revisions

<p>These are the various communication channels used in the Thunderbird project. Please add them all here, so that we can have some kind of a portal to point people who want to get involved with the project to.

<h1> How to subscribe </h1>

<p>Newsgroups are accessible through a newsgroup client (hum, let me think about one, oh yes, Thunderbird), and all of them are accessible as google groups or through a mailing list service. All of the items marked as newsgroups are listed &lt;a href="http://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, so head over there to get the relevant information to connect!

</p>

<h1> If you're a user </h1>

<p>Blog

<ul><li> &lt;a href="http://blog.mozilla.com/thunderbird/"&gt;The Thunderbird blog&lt;/a&gt;: visit our blog to check for major announcements

<p>Support

<ul><li> Get help from the community by visiting the Thunderbird &lt;a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/"&gt;GetSatisfaction&lt;/a&gt; support forum. Mozilla employees and contributors read this forum and try to help as best as they can.

</li><li> If English is not your preferred language, please check this page and find unofficial support in the language you need &lt;a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/Support/Community_support_based_on_languages"&gt;Support based on language&lt;/a&gt;.

</li><li> Unofficial support newsgroup for Thunderbird. Not monitored by Thunderbird but maintained by volunteers. mozilla.support.thunderbird (newsgroup)

</li><li> Help the community: Want to help support Thunderbird users? Then &lt;a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/people/new?company=mozilla_messaging"&gt;register&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging"&gt;help other Thunderbird users&lt;/a&gt;-&lt;a href="Thunderbird/Support/GetSatisfaction/GettingStarted"&gt;check out our Getting Started Guide to Thunderbird Support&lt;/a&gt;!  

<p>Knowledge Base and Manual:

<ul><li> Find articles in our official Thunderbird &lt;a href="http://support.mozillamessaging.com/"&gt;Knowledge Base&lt;/a&gt;. This is an official but primarily volunteer-driven "knowledge base" where you can find quality articles about various Thunderbird topics.  

</li><li> &lt;a href="http://kb.mozillazine.org/Knowledge_Base"&gt;MozillaZine&lt;/a&gt;: a community-maintained Knowledge Base with excellent articles about possibly more specific and/or technical topics.

</li></ul>

<p><b>YOU can help</b> by &lt;a href="https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/improve-knowledge-base"&gt;editing articles or adding articles or translating articles&lt;/a&gt;, no experience required! The articles will be reviewed for accuracy but reviews are generally very quick.

</p><p>Twitter

<ul><li> &lt;a href="http://www.twitter.com"&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt; You might want to follow these people: Standard8, lhirlimann, bwinton, rtanglao, davidascher, jenzed

<p>Facebook

<ul><li> Please join us on our &lt;a href="http://www.facebook.com/Thunderbird"&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; page.

</li></ul>

<h1> If you're interested in the project </h1>

<p>You can contribute

<ul><li> &lt;a href="Thunderbird/tb-planning"&gt;tb-planning&lt;/a&gt; A low-volume, high signal-to-noise-ratio mailing-list that's devoted to high-level Thunderbird topics.

</li><li> &lt;a href="Thunderbird/tb-support-crew"&gt;tb-support-crew&lt;/a&gt; is a mailing list to share raw informal support information, hot support links (e.g. support threads, websites and knowledge bases) and "meta" issues related to helping support Thunderbird users on Get Satisfaction, MozillaZine, GeckoZone and wherever else online folks are supporting Thunderbird users. Subscribe or unsubscribe at https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/tb-support-crew

<p>Mozilla and Thunderbird projects blogs

<ul><li> &lt;a href="http://planet.mozilla.org"&gt;Planet Mozilla&lt;/a&gt; Might be worth a read.

</li><li> &lt;a href="http://planet.mozillamessaging.com"&gt;Planet Mozilla Messaging&lt;/a&gt; Thunderbird team's various blogs. Links to Thunderbird staff and contributor blogs can be found in the right sidebar of the home page if you want to avoid the planet "firehose"!

<p>If you want to know more about the product currently under development

<ul><li> &lt;a href="Thunderbird"&gt;Mozilla Wiki&lt;/a&gt; This includes various general information about the Thunderbird project.

</li><li> You might want to read the &lt;a _fcknotitle="true" href="Thunderbird/StatusMeetings"&gt;Thunderbird/StatusMeetings&lt;/a&gt;, they give weekly status reports about how various projects are moving.

</li><li> Mark Banner (:Standard8) posts updates about branching and releases on his &lt;a href="http://ccgi.standard8.plus.com/blog/"&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;. You can also follow him on &lt;a href="http://twitter.com/#!/standard8"&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt;.

<h1> If you're a tester / want to help </h1>

<p>Ludovic Hirlimann (:Usul) is in charge of Thunderbird QA. You can read his &lt;a href="http://perso.hirlimann.net/~ludo/blog/"&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; or follow him on &lt;a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lhirlimann"&gt;twitter&lt;/a&gt;.

<ul><li> If you're interested in providing support

<ul><li> please join the &lt;a href="https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/tb-support-crew"&gt;tb-support-crew mailing list&lt;/a&gt;.

</li><li> If you're willing to participate in testing events, the &lt;a href="https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/thunderbird-testers"&gt;thunderbird-testers mailing list&lt;/a&gt; is for you.

</li><li> &lt;a _fcknotitle="true" href="Thunderbird:Testing"&gt;Thunderbird:Testing&lt;/a&gt; contains a tremendous amount of information, and should help you getting started if you want to help with quality assurance / testing.

</li><li> The &lt;a href="http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=29"&gt;MozillaZine Thunderbird Builds forum&lt;/a&gt; is a unofficial test community for nightly builds.

</li><li> Talking to us &lt;a href="http://www.mibbit.com/chat/?server=irc.mozilla.org&amp;channel=%23tb-qa"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is a very good way to start even if we are slow to answer.

<h1> If you're a developer </h1>

<ul><li> You WILL want to hang out on &lt;a href="http://irc.mozilla.org/"&gt;IRC&lt;/a&gt;, especially in the #maildev channel. There lies the answer to all of your questions. Plus, the guys are generally friendly. Just ask, and be patient, not all people live in the same timezone.

</li><li> mozilla.dev.applications.thunderbird (newsgroup) If you have questions related to extension and/or Thunderbird development, you'll probably find some help here. Also used to discuss various user-related topics/questions.

</li><li> There's also &lt;a href="https://forums.mozilla.org/addons/"&gt;AMO forums&lt;/a&gt; with a specific &lt;a href="https://forums.mozilla.org/addons/viewforum.php?f=15"&gt;Thunderbird section&lt;/a&gt; which may be helpful.

<ul><li> &lt;a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Thunderbird"&gt;Portal for general Thunderbird info&lt;/a&gt;

</li><li> &lt;a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Extensions/Thunderbird/HowTos"&gt;How-tos for extension developers&lt;/a&gt;

</li><li> &lt;a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/docs/reference"&gt;addons.mozilla.org&lt;/a&gt; Has some links too

</li><li> &lt;a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org"&gt;Bugzilla&lt;/a&gt; is where all the stuff happens. If you're interested in some feature or some development, don't hesitate to CC yourself to the bug if you're interested, and please do check out this &lt;a href="http://blog.johnath.com/2010/02/04/bugzilla-for-humans/"&gt;hilarious video tutorial&lt;/a&gt; about how Bugzilla works, it's really worth it.

</li><li> Just for kicks, see what the Thunderbird team is up to &lt;a href="http://bwinton.github.com/reviewer-dashboard/"&gt;using bwinton's reviewer-dashboard&lt;/a&gt;.