The flip side of this is just as interesting and not as often discussed: as a project maintainer, what can I do to make sure people like the submitter feel comf

The flip side of this is just as interesting and not as often discussed: as a project maintainer, what can I do to make sure people like the submitter feel comfortable and welcome contributing to my project? Here are a few things I've done with Leiningen, my Clojure build tool: * Start "low-hanging fruit" threads after every release explaining simple ways people can contribute. * Create a HACKING guide describing the overall architecture and flow of the project. Include style guidelines and instructions for submitting patches. * Give people commit rights as soon as possible. I've adopted the "one accepted patch, and you're good" policy from the Rubinius project. Yes, this means unqualified people will have the power to make ill-informed commits directly. But in practice people tend to behave when you give them responsibility. Evan, the Rubinius lead, has had to perform less than ten reverts in the three years he's used the policy.