diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index b214544fa..688a6c3c4 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -1,11 +1,48 @@
+# Opening an Issue
+
+For a good bug report:
+
+1. [Search][] for existing Issues, both on GitHub and in general with Google/Stack Overflow before posting a duplicate question.
+2. Update to pyzmq master, if possible, especially if you are already using git. It's
+   possible that the bug you are about to report has already been fixed.
+
+Many things reported as pyzmq Issues are often just libzmq-related,
+and don't have anything to do with pyzmq itself.
+These are better directed to [zeromq-dev][].
+
+When making a bug report, it is helpful to tell us as much as you can about your system
+(such as pyzmq version, libzmq version, Python version, OS Version, how you built/installed pyzmq and libzmq, etc.)
+
+The basics:
+
+```python
+import sys
+import zmq
+
+print "libzmq-%s" % zmq.zmq_version()
+print "pyzmq-%s" % zmq.pyzmq_version()
+print "Python-%s" % sys.version
+```
+
+Which will give something like:
+
+    libzmq-3.3.0
+    pyzmq-2.2dev
+    Python-2.7.2 (default, Jun 20 2012, 16:23:33) 
+    [GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple Clang 4.0 (tags/Apple/clang-418.0.60)]
+
+[search]: https://github.com/zeromq/pyzmq/issues
+[zeromq-dev]: mailto:zeromq-dev@zeromq.org
+
+
 # Licensing and contributing to PyZMQ
 
 PyZMQ uses different licenses for different parts of the code.
 
-The 'core' of PyZMQ (located in zmq/core) is licensed under LGPLv3. This just 
-means that if you make any changes to how that code works, you must release 
-those changes under the LGPL. If you just *use* pyzmq, then you can use any 
-license you want for your own code.
+The 'core' of PyZMQ (located in zmq/core) is licensed under LGPLv3.
+This just  means that if you make any changes to how that code works,
+you must release  those changes under the LGPL.
+If you just *use* pyzmq, then you can use any license you want for your own code.
 
 We don't feel that the restrictions imposed by the LGPL make sense for the 
 'non-core' functionality in pyzmq (derivative code must *also* be LGPL or GPL), 
@@ -16,14 +53,21 @@ your own apps without needing to license your own code with the LGPL or GPL.
 
 ## Your contributions
 
+**Pull Requests are welcome!**
+
 When you contribute to PyZMQ, your contributions are made under the same 
-license as the file you are working on. Any new original code should be BSD 
+license as the file you are working on. Any new, original code should be BSD 
 licensed.
 
+We don't enforce strict style, but when in doubt [PEP8][] is a good guideline.
+The only thing we really don't like is mixing up 'cleanup' in real work.
+
 Examples are copyright their respective authors, and BSD unless otherwise 
 specified by the author. You can LGPL (or GPL or MIT or Apache, etc.) your own new 
 examples if you like, but we strongly encourage using the default BSD license.
 
+[PEP8]: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008
+
 ## Inherited licenses in pyzmq
 
 Some code outside the core is taken from other open-source projects, and