Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Catalin Iacob <iacobcatalin@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I also think a list of small things suitable for new contributors
>> would help attracting them. Not all would stick and go on to larger
>> items but hopefully at least some would.
> I agree with this. Curating such a list is a fair amount of work that
> somebody's got to do, though. The TODO list is full of an awful lot
> of things that don't matter and missing an awful lot of things that
> do.
Yeah. The other problem is that stuff that's actually small doesn't tend
to hang around undone for long, so there's not really a broad array of
stuff just waiting for someone to have a little time. If we had a more
actively maintained TODO list, it would largely contain (a) stuff that
there's insufficient consensus on, and (b) stuff that's just big mean and
nasty to implement.
Having said that, it occurs to me that one way to contribute without
actually writing C code would be to try to drive those unfinished
discussions to consensus, and come up with specs for features that people
agree are well-thought-out. Conversely, establishing a consensus that a
proposal is a bad idea and it should go away from the list would be a
useful activity.
regards, tom lane