Ask HN: How to get into open-source web development?

I've been a web developer for about 4 years now, and I feel like I have a lot to learn from collaborating on open-source projects. Most of my experience is with working alone on projects, and 95% of the time I was being rushed as clients in my country don't understand that building websites takes time, and that quality matters.

My question is: How should I look for projects on which to contribute to over weekends? Are there chatrooms / aggregators for this sort of thing?

Here are some simple ones:

* Help triage some bugs - go into a recent bug report, and confirm that the bug is real and reproducible.

* Help out fixing some bugs in the tools you use. Go into the bug tracker and find something you think you can fix. Start with something smaller/easier so you learn the process.

* Write some documentation for the tools you use.

One of those open coursewares might help If a student/woman I would suggest GSoC or OPW. That stuff helps for sure

I would recommend picking a project that you would really personally like, maybe something that is not as messy as web development.

I defined this for someone else who had the same question a few days ago. There are 4 ways to contribute:

- bugs (find and report them)

- code (the part everyone wants to do)

- docs (the part that everyone should do, but has been given second-class status due to everyone thinking writing code is the only way to feel like you're contributing)

- tests (ever clicked on "button" and everything broke, well if someone wrote a test for the functionality there, it likely wouldn't have)

I urge you to start with the things the pure-coders hate, and that is well-defined, noob-friendly documentation.

You'll never be given the high status of "genius programmer living in basement, changing world", but your documentation and "dumbing that shit down" way of explaining things will sometimes make the project more successful and will carry more weight as far as bringing more users of the code-base.