Contributing

Samaritan should become more useful when somebody other than Casey touches it. A contribution does not need to be code, and it does not need to make the project larger.

Useful contributions

Field reports

Say what you tried, where, with what material or hardware, what happened, and what you would change. A failed practice described precisely is more useful than an unsupported success claim.

Corrections and safety notes

Point to the exact sentence or step. Include an authoritative source when one exists. Food, medicine, chemistry, electrical work, weapons, security, and other high-consequence material need especially clear provenance and limits.

Local adaptations

Translate a handout. Replace a crop calendar with one suited to your climate. Make a print version that works during an outage. Adapt a technical pattern to weaker hardware. Keep the local variation visible instead of presenting it as universal.

Code and documentation

Use the repository and contribution instructions linked from the owning project page. Include tests where the project requires them. Documentation, reproduction notes, and deployment failures are first-class contributions.

Label the state

Use plain state words:

• proposal — an idea with no working implementation or field trial;
• draft — usable enough for review, not yet established by practice;
• built — exists in source or as an artifact;
• deployed — running in a named environment;
• field-tested — exercised by people in the conditions the guide names;
• revised — changed because evidence pushed back.

Do not turn a proposal into a community program by writing about it in the future tense.

Licensing and lineage

The portal links to works with different licensing states. Read the license in the specific repository before copying, modifying, or redistributing its code. When a guide or idea has a source, carry that lineage forward. When your local copy must diverge, say where and why.

No allegiance required

You may improve your own copy without joining anything. Returning the result is welcome, not a condition of use. The aim is a body of practice that can spread without centralizing every participant, dataset, or decision.

Connect when you have something to return.