I’m looking to start giving back.
Problem: I’ve recently discovered I’m not a programmer by a long shot. So, I was thinking of giving back in a non-code way.
I am a native Dutch speaker, so I can help with translation, but I was wondering in what other ways I could contribute other than giving money and translating.
No complaints if you want to give some to me… i have started collecting 500 euro notes if you would like to contribute.
Joking aside For me your valued contributions are very much appreciated on this site as others do.
Writing documentation., especially in your native language. Coders are typically poor documentors. They need help.
Testing. Finding issues on other peoples code helps raise the stsndard of FOSS.
Linux stories. People love to read stories. Manuals and tutorials are not enough, peopke want touches of human interest. You have been doing some writing. Put those skills to use.
I dont understand how anyone can conclude that they are not a coder.? Do you mean you are not mathematical? You are logical… we can see that in things you write. You do havd language skills. What is missing? Did you perhaps set too high a goal?
I was wondering in what other ways I could contribute
Documentation… So many times I try to find good documentation in many FOSS software and it can be really difficult sometimes. This is especially true if they tool is highly specialised or low level etc.
Some resources:
As someone who learns visually, it’s sometimes very difficult to understand things when presented in an abstract manner. And tbf, for things like algorithms etc sometimes even visuals are too difficult 
.
My advice is, find a project that you are already familiar with, most likely because you use it regularly on a day to day basis. This gives you an advantage that you’d normally not have, that is to be the user of that tool and be able to understand what it lacks based on your judgement.
Translation is very helpful for projects. As a matter of fact, the Digital Freedom Foundation needs some volunteers to translate web pages. Some projects might need artwork or creation of assets such as FLOSS licensed fonts. The FreePats project needs soundfonts and recordings of instruments. Some projects needs beta testers. Sometimes it’s helpful for them to have someone test on platforms they don’t have access to and they welcome that help. Sometimes some projects simply won’t support platforms they don’t have access to and don’t want bug reports for anything but what they officially support. There are some Creative Commons/public domain projects that need people to scan material or check for typos in scanned material or create recordings of people reading the material. Other people have already suggested helping projects with documentation. Some Linux distributions need packagers. OpenFoodFacts needs people to help them increase the number of items in their database and fact check the items listed. Another great way to help is by advocating for Free, Libre, Open Source Software usage. Let people know about your favorite FLOSS programs and encourage people to try them. The Digital Freedom Foundation, the Free Software Foundation (see FSF40) and other groups are looking for people to help organize local groups and to help spread the word about adopting FLOSS.
Write DOCUMENTATION. The documentation for a lot of free software is (trying to express this in a kind way …) terrible. Either it is too sketchy or goes to the opposite extreme, very “formal” with a huge amount of boilerplate telling you very little. A few projects (like Exim) have a printed book you can buy, but that’s useless because the book is always hopelessly out-of-date. Other projects that really, really need help include Gimp and Emacs. I have used emacs daily for over 20 years and still can’t follow the documentation on writing macros. I’ve used Gimp a couple of times weekly for the same amount of time but when I wanted to draw an ellipse yesterday I googled for a youtube tutorial, because I knew for certain that the manual wouldn’t help me (the “ellipse tool” draws a filled ellipse, not an ellipse).
I suggest that you choose a FOSS project (app or distribution) and ask the development team how you can best help, other than as a developer, and describing what talents/experience you have to offer.
Ernie
It is because programmers are usually very poor documenters.
There are exceptions… eg the Kernighan and Ritchie book on C programming language.
The task of documenting a project can be larger than the task of coding it.
Documentation needs maintenance.
The idea that if some package has a GUI, then it is self documenting, is a illusion… a 2D human interface does not help with documentation… in some cases it makes it harder to document.
One example is LibreOffice. It is extremely well documented… In English. In other languages the documentation tends to lag behind English. That can have some pretty horrible concequences, for example in adoption. Organizations tend to want documentation available in the languages of the areas they operate in. There’s a lot of people who don’t speak a word of English.
I guess projects should strive for documentation in at English, Spanish, Arab, French, and Chinese before they even start to think about a release.
Sadly, internationalization of documentation tends to take a back seat for a lot of projects. Translation of documentation is simply not regarded as glorious.