I came to Dreamwidth because I already knew Mark and Janine and wanted their new site to succeed. I was NOT specifically invited to help with coding, but it was obvious that the need was there, and I felt I understood the Perl language well enough to be useful, in spite of a lack of previous experience with this sort of project. I started out fixing a few tiny things, all the while asking Mark how to find things in the code, until I developed enough familiarity to do things on my own. That one-on-one mentoring was invaluable.

I think my favorite aspect of the DW project culture is that every contribution is welcomed, even if it's incomplete or flawed. There is a sense that we want to help developers improve instead of rejecting them for not meeting some sort of standard of quality. I suspect this is an attitude that is, if not unique among OSS projects, certainly unusual.