Often, the hard tasks at the center of a domain can only be tackled by the insiders -- but if only the hardest tasks get focus, and only by experts, then those new to the domain do not have opportunities to gain expertise.

One of the important concepts espoused by Wenger is legitimate peripheral participation. It is, essentially, the idea of apprenticeship; the key difference is that, rather than being apprenticed to an individual, a new practitioner can be apprenticed to the entire community of practice.

In a volunteer community especially, people who join are going to be invested in learning more and doing more, and it's important to identify work that matches the newbie's skills, invites them to stretch those skills, and provides people who can help them develop those skills as required.

As an example, learning to package software is not easy -- but some software is easier to package than others. Newbie Fedora packagers are invited to learn how to package fonts, since they are simple and very uniform in how they are packaged. There are also lots and lots of fonts out there that need to be packaged. It's a perfect "on-ramp" for newbie packagers, and because there are so many fonts to be packaged, there are plenty of opportunities for newbies to be immediately useful.