Question for the candidates:
Inkscape has tried to be welcoming to both developer and non-developer contributions to the project.
Welcoming, yes, certainly. Any motivated people can easily find its place in the project. We now have regular contributor in all major aspects of the project (dev, translations, documentation, bug triage...). But sometimes I feel (from a bug triager's point of view) we're not that encouraging. Ok, we accept contributors, but we don't always motivate them as needed. When someone attach a patch to a report, it can take very long before a tester or a dev take a look and advice (we currently have 144 open reports with patch attached). I would find it very disappointing to see my patch stay untested for years, and probably wouldn't contribute again (random report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/176541, patch posted more than 6 years ago, still not tested). In a perfect world, all reporters should receive an answer as quickly as possible so that we don't give the impression that we don't care. Not easy, but could be improved.
Do you think the project has been successful there? Is it getting better or worse?
There are very good points: 1. The new website is a real improvement, with the help of lots of dev and non-dev contributors. The possibility to live edit and translate the site was a key point that led to that positive result. If you give the appropriate tools to users, they can become contributors. 2. I rarely visit the Inkscape-forum, but it seems very active. The LP Answer section is very active too. In 2008, unanswered questions were frequent. It's no longer the case.
Mixed feelings: 3. Bug triaging also improved since 2008. I never used the SF bug tracker, but LP is very convenient for that kind of task. So again, the tool probably helped. But what helped the most, IMHO, is the fact that new (and very high quality) contributors joined the team in 2009. Unfortunately, regular triagers are quite rare, and some reports don't get the attention they would need. Bug triaging is not easy. You have to know the application (or parts of it) as an advanced user, and have a good idea on how the features are implemented. And the job is somewhat ungrateful, particularly when you're triaging alone. Thus it's not something that's going to attract users, but it's not a lost cause... 4. Translators were very active up to 0.47, and I feel it got worse until very recently (we just added 18 new Indian languages two weeks ago).
What could/should we do to recognize or encourage non-developer contributions?
Say "thank you" to all our contributors ;) Invite users to report bugs (or comment existing ones) or new ideas in our tracker. Have developers help bug triagers test patches and triage bugs (e.g. after committing a patch, it could be useful to test all related reports in case some of them are incidentally fixed). Launch dedicated campaigns when we have special needs (translation campaign for forgotten languages?)
Regards.