Add documentation on how to contribute to the project

[codersquid]

Add documentation on how to contribute that you can point to as a starting point for new people to read on how to contribute. For example, when a new person shows up in irc, you'd point them to this.

As for where the documentation could live -- github treats CONTRIBUTING.md as a first class citizen, so you could put the documentation in that, and then also put it in the README as a link. Or, you could document it on the wiki and have a link to that in CONTRIBUTING and the README.

[mithro]

Would love help in making it! :)

There is a getting started section at http://code.timvideos.us/Home.html
Plus an ideas page at http://code.timvideos.us/Ideas.html

[codersquid]

I made a first pass. There are some things that I would improve but am ignorant of:

• if you prefer people to squash commits, add that to the doc with a brief example. For example, stealing from myself:

Periodically update your branch from the parent develop branch. Use git rebase (not git merge):

$ git fetch parent
$ git rebase parent/develop

We prefer a pull request with one commit rather than many small commits. To avoid making a request with many commits, you can do an interactive rebase and use fixup.

$ git rebase -i parent/master

• Add a terse definition list for the labels that contributors can use to hone in on for task selection. Or, if you don't use labels this way I should remove that part from my pull request.
• Add code style preferences -- perhaps with a link to any lint type of config tools so people can do an automated check . This is helpful so that you don't end up spending time on nitty comments and can focus on real comments. If this has not been a problem for you, I will remove that from the doc. I do not know your style guide right now, so I added a sentence with instructions for contacting the channel for information.
• Links to setup guides that could be included in the Documentation section for illustrating my example.

Unfortunately, I don't have time to spend right now to bug you guys to get enough info to make these improvements, so I'm just making a list for you. If you like the idea in general, maybe someone else could make another pull request to add the info.

[mithro]

Thank you so much! Merged your pull request, will try and add more information.

Will keep this issue open until we have a newbie say that our contribution documentation is awesome.