[TWN team] About tasks for newcomers (was: Recent changes to the wiki pages)

[Lunar]

Lunar:
> version 62
> Author: lunar
> Date:   2013-09-10T09:40:37+00:00
> 
>    rework the get involved section
> 
> --- version 61
> +++ version 62
> @@ -290,32 +290,30 @@
>    [XXX] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/calea-2-and-tor
>    [XXX] http://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#Backdoor
>  
> -Simple Ways to Contribute This Week 
> ------------------------------------ 
> -
> -Each week will be listed here some simple tasks that people who want to
> -begin to hack on the Tor Project could do.
> -
> -If you're hacking on Tor and want a ticket featured here, add "easy" to
> -the keywords field on Trac.
> -
> -Highlighted this week:
> -
> -* Let User's know which IP is making a new control port connection [XXX]
> -  Why? Let User's know which IP/application is making a new control port 
> -  connection so they have info to go on to rule out an attack. 
> -  Skills: C, Network Service Primitives 
> -
> -* Runa Sandvik is asking for help [XXX] to diagnose what's currently 
> -  wrong with  Tor Cloud [XXX] images. 
> -  Why? Their numbers are declining [XXX], and may impact censored users 
> -  being able to reach the Tor network.
> -  Skills: Debian System Administration, Package Managers, ???
> -
> +Help the Tor community!
> +-----------------------
> +
> +Tor is about protecting everyone’s freedom and privacy. There are many 
> +way to help [XXX] but getting involved in such a busy community can be 
> +daunting. Here's a selection of tasks on which one can get started:
> +
> +Get tor to log the source of control port connection [XXX]. It would 
> +help developping controller applications or libraries (like Stem [XXX]) 
> +to know which program is responsible for a given access to the control 
> +facilities of the tor daemon. Knowledge required: C programming, 
> +basic understanding of network sockets.
> +
> +Diagnose what is currently wrong with Tor Cloud images [XXX]. Tor
> +Cloud [XXX] is an easy way to deploy bridges and it looks like
> +the automatic upgrade procedure had troubles. Let's have these
> +virtual machines be again useful for censored users. Knowledge
> +required: basic understanding of Ubuntu system administration.
> +
> +  [XXX] https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/volunteer.html.en
> +  [XXX] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9698 
> +  [XXX] https://stem.torproject.org/
>    [XXX] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005417.html
>    [XXX] https://cloud.torproject.org
> -  [XXX] https://metrics.torproject.org/network.html#cloudbridges
> -  [XXX] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9698 

Here's the rationale for the above changes:

Tor Weekly News is “weekly”, so there no need to say that in the title.

“simple” is highly subjective. Telling someone that something they might
not understand is “simple” leave them with a bad feeling. We should not
do that.

What is hard in a community like Tor is find something useful that you
can do with the time you have at hand at what you already know. Bonus
point if it's fun or high profile. The new intro tries to capture that.

How the TWN team finds the task that are listed here is a technical
detail, not very relevant to the readers of TWN. We should encourage
everyone in the community to push for their pet task to be listed here.
We'll tell them about the keyword when that happens.

No need to use bullets and indentation. Having a single paragraph for
each task pushes us to not be too verbose, and ease also easier to
format.

I've tried to reword the description in a less heavy way (dropping the
“Why?”)

I've replaced “Skills” with “Knowledge required” because it felt more
accurate, but I'm still not very happy with the “required”… If people
want to use that as an opportunity to learn, good for them, but we won't
really help.

-- 
Lunar                                             <lunar at torproject.org>
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