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We're absolutely interested in helping new contributors, and we don't have as strong a mentoring program as we'd like.  We encourage prospective contributors to join our [platform Discord server](https://discord.gg/7jf8UzS), which is distinct from the communities-focused server linked in the right sidebar.  The platform server is for everybody who wants to help, whether that's writing code or testing or documentation or database stuff or whatever else.

On the platform server you'll see a #readme channel with more of an introduction, including an invitation to introduce yourself.  If you tell us what you're interested in helping with or learning more about, folks on the server will help guide you further.  What I've seen work best for new contributors is to start by [setting up a development environment](https://github.com/codidact/qpixel/blob/develop/INSTALLATION.md) -- if you run into problems, folks on the Discord server will help. Then ask for a good "starter issue" or pick something on [GitHub](https://github.com/codidact/qpixel/issues) that's tagged "easy" or "good first issue" and that appeals to you.  If there's something specific you want to work on, say so and folks will help you find an entry point.  The [contributor guidelines](https://github.com/codidact/qpixel/blob/develop/CONTRIBUTING.md) on GitHub cover workflow, coding standards, and stuff like that.

I've seen, and gotten, a lot of debugging help on that Discord server.  (I did not know Ruby/Rails and am still a beginner.)  We also have the [Collab Q&A site](https://collab.codidact.org/), which is a good place to ask questions about architecture or code patterns or  topics that don't require heavily interactive debugging.  There's a lot of good knowledge buried in our Discord server probably never to be found again because Discord search isn't so great, and it'd be great make more of these answers more visible.  The Collab site doesn't get a lot of activity but we're paying attention to it.  Please feel free to ask questions there.

We don't have a mentoring program per se or a formal learning program/tour.  But everyone was new sometime and we've got some really helpful people.  I hope you'll join us.