TDF Community Blog

Yes, we’re just over half way through the May 2016 Month of LibreOffice campaign, and a lot of activity has taken place. So far we’ve awarded over 230 badges for contributions to code, translations, documentation, AskLibreOffice and social media. Take a look at that page and if you spot your name, click one of the Share buttons to tell the world about your contribution!

Want to adorn your website or blog with one of these lovely badges? Just follow these steps and help to make LibreOffice even better than ever before. And, of course, if you want to give someone credit for their work in the LibreOffice project, award them a barnstar and show your thanks.

There’s still two weeks to go in the Month of LibreOffice, so get involved and see how may badges you can collect!

Every contribution to the LibreOffice project – whether it’s a large code patch or just a small bug report – makes the software better for everyone. Over the last few years we’ve had many thousands of contributions from all around the world, and in May 2016 we really want to highlight all the effort goes in to LibreOffice. So we’re running a new campaign to credit everyone who contributes to the project!

Barnstars

If you’re involved with LibreOffice development, design, documentation, translation or QA, and want to show your appreciation for someone’s efforts, award them a barnstar on our special wiki page. This is a bronze, silver or gold icon that shows your thanks for that person’s help or contribution, like so:

To award a barnstar, all you have to do is visit the wiki, log in, and copy and paste the template. Fill in the details for the person you want to credit and show your appreciation!

Badges

Meanwhile, LibreOffice contributors can earn badges throughout May by doing various jobs. These include: confirming a bug report, having a code patch committed to the LibreOffice source tree, translating a string in the interface, helping users, and more. They look like this:

Every time a contributor completes one of these jobs, we will add them to the list of badges on our wiki. Everyone who earns a badge can proudly show it off on their blog or social media accounts! At the end of the campaign we’ll make a high-score list for the contributors who earned the most badges.

How do I get a badge?

There are six badges covering many aspects of LibreOffice:

• Help to confirm bugs: go to our Bugzilla page and look for new bugs. If you can recreate one, add a comment like “CONFIRMED on Windows 10 and LibreOffice 5.1.2”. Make sure you’re using the latest version of LibreOffice!

• Contribute code: The codebase is big, but there are lots of places to get involved with small jobs. See our Developers page on the website and this page on the wiki to get started. Once you’ve submitted a patch, if it gets merged we’ll award you a badge!

• Translate the interface: LibreOffice is available in a wide range of languages, but its interface translations need to be kept up-to-date. Or maybe you want to translate the suite to a whole new language? Get involved here.

• Write documentation: Another way to earn a badge is to help the LibreOffice documentation team. Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.

• Answer questions from users: Over on Ask LibreOffice there are many users looking for help with the suite. We’re keeping an eye on that site so if you give someone useful advice, you’ll get a shiny badge to add to your collection.

• Spread the word: Tell everyone about LibreOffice on Twitter! Just say why you love it or what you’re using it for, add the #libreoffice hashtag, and we’ll award you with a badge.

Can you get all six badges? Good luck!

So let’s go

The campaigns run until the end of the month, so you have around four weeks to award barnstars (or earn them!) and pick up badges for your contributions. We’ll be posting regular updates on our Twitter account, and of course keep an eye on the wiki pages to see the progress. It’s going to be awesome!