Episode 272: Maintainer Month 2025 with Sarah Rainsberger of Astro

Jun 6, 2025

Ask episode

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

Guest

Sarah Rainsberger

Panelists

Richard Littauer | Abby Mayes | Eriol Fox

Show Notes

In this special Maintainer Month episode of Sustain, hosts Richard, Abby, and Eriol talk with guest, Sarah Rainsberger, a documentation lead at Astro, who shares her journey from teaching high school mathematics to becoming an open source contributor. Sarah elaborates on her approach to documentation, emphasizing the importance of clear, supportive, and inclusive communication to onboard new contributors effectively. She also discusses using low-tech tools like Chromebooks and cloud-based editors for open source contributions. The episode highlights the strategies employed by the Astro Docs team to recognize and value contributions. Press download now to hear more!

[00:02:30] Sarah shares her background, role at Astro, how she got involved in documentation that started by fixing a bad choir website, and why she chose Astro over Gatsby and quickly became a key contributor.

[00:06:49] She reflects on the moment she connected her work with the concept of “open source.”

[00:07:54] Sarah talks about becoming a leader using Chromebook, taking lessons on Scrimba, and using cloud tools like CodeSandbox and Gitpod, the Astro community embracing her methods, and how she built a reputation as someone making meaningful contributions regardless of hardware.

[00:14:24] Sarah explains how docs are “self-serve support” and essential to project success.

[00:16:28] The conversation turns to combatting the stigma that docs are low value and Sarah addresses the false perception that documentation isn’t real development.

[00:18:28] Sarah shares that Astro has over 1,000 docs contributors and details their intentional process of welcoming, crediting, and celebrating new contributors.

[00:24:37] How does Astro handle lower-quality contributions? Astro uses the motto: “Not worse than what we had before.” They edit or mentor rather than reject, to build confidence and retain contributors.

[00:29:12] Astro maintains a separate documentation site (“D Squared”) that outlines its processes for contributing to documentation.

[00:33:25] Sarah shares where to find her work at the Astro Docs and where to find her.

Quotes

[00:05:26] “If I’m going in, let’s go all in.”

[00:12:50] “I have chosen to maintain low tech.”

[00:12:59] “I am known for my evil devices.”

[00:14:36] “Docs are so important to a project that you want someone else to use or contribute to.”

[00:15:28] “Docs is the most scalable type of support that you can have.”

[00:16:37] “Everyone complains about docs until it’s someone else’s project.”

[00:26:51] “PRs don’t just fall out of the sky; they are effort, and they are work.”

[00:27:05] “There is some motivation behind this PR.”

[00:31:41] “Several of our maintainers started by translating the docs.”

[00:31:49] “If you want to find mistakes in your English docs, you want translators.”

Spotlight

[00:34:40] Abby’s’ spotlight is CommunityRule.
[00:35:04] Eriol’s spotlight is State of Docs.
[00:35:19] Richard’s spotlight is Nathan Schneider and the Protocol Oral History Project.
[00:36:08] Sarah’s spotlight is Better GitHub Co-Authors.

Credits

Produced by Richard Littauer
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound

Special Guest: Sarah Rainsberger.

Support Sustain