Contributor profile

Hi, I'm Julien (Sphinx on the Internets) and am based in France. I work in the software industry. I have been contributing to MDN Web Docs for more than nine years now, mostly localizing the content in French.

How did you start using MDN?

I started using MDN Web Docs by contributing to it. That surely is not the typical way, but because I'm not a web developer, I was not the typical reader/user.

I started contributing to open source through the Open Advice project run by the French association, Framasoft. I was lucky to discover great people and learned a ton along the way. Some folks were also members of the French-speaking Mozilla community, one thing leading to another, and I was soon on IRC and subscribed to a mailing list (pepperidge farm remembers). Thanks to all the goofy people out there. :)

My first steps as a Mozilla contributor were expanding the Glossary section of MDN Web Docs in French after a call for help on the said mailing list. I also contributed to other Mozilla projects but stuck with MDN for a while.

What do you like about the website?

MDN Web Docs is a great resource for anyone learning about web technologies and creating stuff using them. Whether you're a seasoned web developer or just someone discovering the web, whether you speak English or French, and whether you use framework ABC or XYZ, you will find the documentation on MDN helpful and accessible.

Another major thing about MDN is that it's open. Anyone can contribute to the docs, whether it's by fixing a typo, enhancing an article, or of course, translating the content.

Why do you contribute?

As with many things, the reasons behind why I contribute to MDN Web Docs have evolved with time. At first, the discovery of a project, a volunteer community, and MDN itself drove me. Afterward, I wanted to leverage my contributions to learn new stuff (you actually learn a thing or two while translating hundreds of JavaScript documentation pages ^ ^). Then, someone told me it would be impossible to translate the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript sections into French, so I turned the impossible to possible

Nowadays, I'm more interested in maintaining the existing translated docs and helping new contributors, while keeping an eye on localization and internationalization so that the language is not a barrier for anyone wanting to build with web technologies.