User blog:Grunny/Introducing the Volunteer Developer Program

Hi, everyone! Today I would like to introduce you to a new initiative by Wikia: the Volunteer Developer Program.

Volunteer Developers are a group of users who have shown a high level of skill and interest in writing code for the Wikia platform. Many of you use some of their custom scripts every day, such as Chat Hacks. At the moment, they are four members strong: Monchoman45, TK-999, Sovq, and Sactage, but in the future we may recruit some other technically-minded users onto the team.

Starting today, they'll be helping out Wikia's engineering department by fixing bugs and committing them to Wikia's source code. This will not only help the engineers have more time to work on new features for you, but also give the volunteers valuable experience as software developers. Ultimately, they are dedicated to making your time here at Wikia as smooth as possible (bug-wise), and we can't wait to see what they accomplish!

In addition to fixing bugs, they'll also be adopting the Dev Wiki as their new home. Using features like Forum and Chat, they will be able to work out particularly hard bugs with some of Wikia's finest engineers and each other, as well as keep documentation on anything interesting they come up with. The program is invite-only at this time; if you are interested, you can start by participating on the Dev Wiki.

If you have any other questions about what they do, feel free to leave any of them messages here or at the Dev Wiki, or comment below!

Here's some info about the group:


 * Sovq is a Polish Volunteer Developer. On wikis, he likes to do everything that is not writing articles – organizing category structures, designing skins, logos, templates, tinkering with custom CSS styles and JavaScript functionalities, playing around with available extensions, keeping everything in a clean, intuitive, ordered and consistent format – so generally all the stuff nobody ever cares about. He is an admin on a handful of small gaming wikis.


 * Monchoman45 is an avid hacker and gamer. He has extensive experience with JavaScript and some experience with PHP, and hopes to squash many bugs as a volunteer dev. Monch enjoys logic, first person shooters, and long walks on the beach.


 * Sactage is a high school student in his last year before university. When he's not "enjoying" his school work, he likes to program various things in Python, PHP, Perl, JS, and Java, as well as play some videogames with his friends.


 * TK has been on Wikia since 2010 and dabbles in JavaScript and PHP. When not coding in a tty device to excessively loud background music, he can be found at the Star Wars Fanon Wiki or in the midst of enjoying a decent horror movie.