begin v3 era contributing documentation (exercism#1177)

* start revising contributing documentation

* clarify wording

* Update README.md

Co-authored-by: Peter Goodspeed-Niklaus <[email protected]>

* add counter example, stylistic comparison

* caveat Exercism-wide contributing

* Update docs/CONTRIBUTING.md

Co-authored-by: Peter Goodspeed-Niklaus <[email protected]>

* condense line

* condense line

* caveat and more rewording

* Apply suggestions from code review

Co-authored-by: Peter Goodspeed-Niklaus <[email protected]>

* add other improvements

* lint contributing.md

Co-authored-by: Peter Goodspeed-Niklaus <[email protected]>

README.md

@@ -7,15 +7,7 @@ Exercism exercises in Rust
 
 ## Contributing
 
-Thank you so much for contributing! :tada:
-
-Please read about how to [get involved in a track](https://github.com/exercism/docs/tree/main/contributing-to-language-tracks). Be sure to read the Exercism [Code of Conduct](https://exercism.io/code-of-conduct).
-
-We welcome pull requests of all kinds. No contribution is too small.
-
-We encourage contributions that provide fixes and improvements to existing exercises. Please note that this track's exercises must conform to the Exercism-wide standards described in the [documentation](https://github.com/exercism/docs/tree/main/language-tracks/exercises). If you're unsure about how to make a change, then go ahead and open a GitHub issue, and we'll discuss it.
-
-If you want to contribute but don't know where to start, the [issues](https://github.com/exercism/rust/issues) tab shows what items are currently of interest to the community. In addition, it is often worth checking the [track dashboard](https://tracks.exercism.io/rust/main), which flags any exercises whose version has fallen behind the version of the [canonical data](https://github.com/exercism/problem-specifications). PRs which keep the track up to date are particularly welcome!
+Check out our [contributor documentation](docs/CONTRIBUTING.md).
 
 ## Exercise Tests
 

bin/lint_markdown.sh

@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 #!/usr/bin/env bash
 set -e
-npx markdownlint-cli concepts/**/*.md exercises/**/*.md docs/maintaining.md
+npx markdownlint-cli concepts/**/*.md exercises/**/*.md docs/maintaining.md docs/CONTRIBUTING.md

docs/CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+# Contributing to the Rust Exercism Track
+
+This track is a work in progress.
+Please take all the value you can from it, but if you notice any way to improve it, we are eager for pull requests.
+Fixing a typo in documentation is every bit as valid a contribution as a massive addition of code.
+
+> A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned.
+>
+> -- Paul Valéry
+
+Nonetheless, feel free to peruse what we have written thus far!
+
+*Contributions welcome :)*
+
+As one of the many tracks in Exercism, contributions here should observe Exercism standards like the [Code of Conduct](https://exercism.io/code-of-conduct).
+This document introduces the ways you can help and what maintainers expect of contributors.
+
+## Ways to Contribute
+
+As with many Open Source projects, work abounds.
+Here are a few categories of welcome contribution:
+- improving existing exercises
+- creating new exercises
+- improving internal tooling
+- updating documentation
+- fixing typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors
+
+
+## Merging Philosophy
+
+A [pull request](https://docs.github.com/en/github/getting-started-with-github/github-glossary#pull-request) should address one logical change.
+This could be small or big.
+
+For example, [#1175](https://github.com/exercism/rust/pull/1175) fixed a single typo in a single file after minutes of collaboration.
+
+It was a small, short pull request with one logical change.
+
+[#653](https://github.com/exercism/rust/pull/653) introduced the doubly linked list exercise after months of collaboration.
+
+It was a big, long-running pull request with one logical change.