petern48 commented on code in PR #2451:
URL: https://github.com/apache/sedona/pull/2451#discussion_r2463149731


##########
CONTRIBUTING.md:
##########
@@ -17,28 +17,72 @@
  under the License.
  -->
 
-# How to contribute to Apache Sedona
 
-Welcome!  We'd love to have you contribute to Apache Sedona!
+# Contributing to Apache Sedona
 
-## Did you find a bug?
+Welcome! 🎉
+We’re excited that you’d like to contribute to **Apache Sedona**, an 
open-source project for large-scale spatial data processing.
 
-Create an issue with a reproducible example.  Please specify the Sedona 
version, Java version, code snippet, and error message.
+---
 
-## Did you create a PR to fix a bug?
+## 🧭 Getting Started
 
-See 
[here](https://sedona.apache.org/latest/community/rule/#make-a-pull-request) 
for instructions on how to open PRs.
+Before contributing, please make sure your development environment is set up 
correctly.
+Check out our guides:
 
-We appreciate bug fixes - thank you in advance!
+* [Developing Sedona (Java Guide)](./docs/community/develop.md)
+* [Building Sedona from Source (Python & Build Guide)](./docs/setup/compile.md)

Review Comment:
   Personally (heavy emphasis on personally; this hasn't yet been discussed), I 
was planning to propose cutting out as much of this file as possible and 
leaving just a link or two. At the moment, the overall contributor guide is too 
spread out in a non-intuitive way: there's this file, the [make a 
PR](https://sedona.apache.org/latest/community/rule/#make-a-pull-request) 
section in a different page, and the two develop and compile pages I'm 
highlighting here.
   
   I think it hurts to have extra content in this file because the 
`CONTRIBUTING.md` can often be the first place a new potential contributor 
looks for setup instructions. **The more complex the onboarding is, the longer 
it takes for them to figure out environment setup, the less likely they are to 
stick around to contribute their first code contribution**
   
   I'm happy with SedonaDB's 
[CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/apache/sedona-db/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md),
 actually. It's dirt simple: a link to a single page that tells you everything 
you need as a contributor 
([Datafusion's](https://github.com/apache/datafusion/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md) 
is the same). Easy to navigate. I notice more active contributors in SedonaDB, 
and they do properly test their code locally.
   
   I plan on proposing a future PR to consolidate the guides better soon, and 
that's where we can clean up most of this file. I propose we minimize this PR 
to simply adding these two links for now. Optionally, you can help us with 
cleaning up this file (though that could take longer since it might involve 
discussion). WDYT @bunnysocks? This means removing most of what you've done in 
this PR (which I apologize for), but I think the conciseness + simplicity is 
valuable here for making a smoother new contributor experience.



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