HowTo: Help maintainers in the issue queues

One of the best (and most important) ways for new contributors to jump in is by assisting module, theme, and Drupal core maintainers by helping to keep their project issue queues clean.

This means doing the following:

• Help out with support requests. Often, questions are asked in issue queues that are either very basic, or are something you might've encountered before by using the project. Help out users who are in need to help close out support request issues.
• Mark duplicate issues as duplicate. Generally, this means finding the oldest of the issues and marking others "duplicate" with a pointer to the original, unless a newer one has a patch and lots of activity around it.
• Confirm whether bug reports are still valid. If you can no longer reproduce a bug, mark it as "closed." If you can, respond back and confirm that you see the issue too, if possible with more details on how it can be reproduced or where you think the problem might be.
• Ask for more information on unclear requests. If it's not obvious what's being asked for, mark the issue to "active (needs more info)" or try and fill out details yourself.

Every issue that is responded to by someone who is not a project developer, means more time in their day that they can spend making their projects better! And issue queue cleaning is also something you can do between things or while on boring phone calls. It's a great way to get familiar with a new module before you use it, and a wonderful way to show support to a developer whose code has saved you time and money. Doing this consistently enough also makes your name stick out from the crowd as a wonderful contributor, which has all the usual benefits of the karma system.

So don't delay; start today! :)