Editing Community Organizing (section)

=== Types of Contributors ===

Participation in online communities tends to manifest as a long-tail distribution; a tiny, active minority produces most of the content while the majority of community members produces very little individually. For example, the most active 0.1% of contributors produce nearly half of Wikipedia’s value, and the English Wikipedia’s consumers outnumber producers by 10,000 to 1.

* '''Peripheral''' contributors, aka “lurkers” are often Users and predominantly consume the community projects, they may contribute only once or irregularly and have shorter-term involvement. While they make up the majority of contributors, they account for a smaller portion of total community activity.
* '''Newcomers''' are contributors who have recently joined the ecosystem and are still learning the community norms, practices and codebase. They often start with smaller contributions as they build up experience. Proper onboarding and mentoring of Newcomers is critical for ecosystem sustainability.
* '''Core contributors''' are those with substantial and long-term involvement in the ecosystem. They make frequent contributions, work across multiple projects, and are responsible for the majority of community effort. Core contributors typically have both high intensity (many commits to important projects) and spread (contributions across many projects).
* '''Mentors''' are experienced contributors (often core contributors) who help guide and support Newcomers. They play a vital role in knowledge transfer, maintaining community practices, and helping new developers become productive contributors. Good mentorship increases contributor retention and helps grow the community.

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