The "work" of MDN happens on the MDN site, but the "community" also happens through (asynchronous) discussion and (synchronous) online chat and meetings.
Asynchronous discussions
To share information and have ongoing discussions, Mozilla has "discussion forums" which you can access as either mailing lists or Google groups, depending on your preference. (Or even as newsgroups, if you're old enough to know what that is.) The forums that are particular to MDN[1] are:
- dev-mdc a.k.a. mozilla.dev.mdc
- This list is where we have ongoing discussions about documentation on MDN. We talk about process changes, improvements we've made, and we sort out who would like to work on which content. It's highly recommended that you join this list if you're interested in seriously diving into documentation on MDN! (Why "dev-mdc"? In the past, this site was known as "Mozilla Developer Center", or MDC. The mailing list dates back to that era, so it's dev-mdc.)
- dev-mdn a.k.a. mozilla.dev.mdn
- This forum is where we hold discussions about the development work on MDN's underlying Kuma platform. If you're curious about the development work going on behind the scenes, want to be involved in the process of making decisions about the platform, or are working on patches to improve the platform, you should definitely get involved on this list.
- mdn a.k.a. mozilla.mdn
- This forum is for high-level planning and prioritization discussions, for the MDN website and other related initiatives.
There are also a few forums specific to MDN localization communities. If your community is very large and active, you can probably get a forum created for your community; just ask us and we'll look into it. Currently, these languages have forums: Spanish and Japanese.
[1] Yes, we know these names are overlapping and confusing. Historical accident. Sorry about that.
Chat in IRC
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is our preferred method for day-to-day chat and real-time discussions among community members. We use a few channels on the server irc.mozilla.org for discussions related to MDN.
- #mdn
- This channel is our primary channel for discussing the content of MDN. We talk about writing, organization of content, and so on. We also have "water cooler" conversations here—it's a way our community can keep in touch and just hang out. This is also the place to talk about other aspects of MDN (other than development of the platform), such as Demo Studio, profiles, and so on.
- #mdndev
- This channel is where our development team—the people that write the code that makes MDN work—hangs out and discusses their day-to-day work. You're welcome to join in and either participate in the development or simply ask questions about issues you see with the software.
These channels are most likely to be active during weekdays in North America.
You may want to learn more about IRC and use an installable IRC client such as ChatZilla. It is implemented as a Firefox add-on, which makes it quick and easy to install and use. If you're not familiar with IRC, an easy way to join is using a web-based IRC client such as Mibbit. Here are the direct links to the #mdn and #mdndev channels on Mibbit.
Join our biweekly meetings (and other events)
Every other week, the MDN community holds an IRC-based meeting to exchange notes, talk about what we've been doing, and sort out what we'd like to do for the next two weeks. We also talk about development plans for the MDN platform itself, and often get updates about new and upcoming features of the site. These are casual, fun meetings, and everyone's welcome to participate.
See the MDN Community Meetings page on the Mozilla wiki for details on the schedule as well as agendas and notes for past and upcoming meetings.
See the MDN Events calendar for these and other meetings, doc sprints, and other events. The recurring meetings are summarized on the MDN Meetings wiki page.
If you see a meeting which takes place in the "mdn" channel on our Vidyo videoconferencing system, you can join the conversation on the web.