Started a page -> http://www.freeciv.org/wiki/Branch_Statuses
Currently just lists statuses of active branches, and documents just those phases that are currently active.
I think an ingame directory/link option pointing potential contributors to where to go to check to get involved would be helpful (it could just point to the wiki page). I happened to stumble upon this platform after searching where to run "freeciv bug reporting".
Another open source game (Endless Sky) which is based on a different commercial game (Escape Velocity if I recall correctly) that has been in continuous active development for going on 7 years does this and it has helped them get quite a number of active contributors by actively asking on its game startup screen a section asking for contributors when the game is initially loaded
Reply To (Anonymous)
I think an ingame directory/link option pointing potential contributors to where to go to check to get involved would be helpful
The distribution mentions this bug tracker in quite a number of places; from the client help to various documents and man pages to any logs from bug.c module to the metainfo file (last one is true starting only from 3.0.4. The software repositories should collect, and show, the information from the metainfo files)
alain_bkr at #44375: "As a potential occasional contributor i would prefer a document explaining the meanings of branches (i guess save format changes, and some major feature changes), and where / how to work in my own branch on github and get patches merged."
I think the "occasional" is a notable word here - we don't have a good resource for someone, who does not continuously follow freeciv-dev mailing list announcements and/or tickets on freeciv-tickets, to check what's the situation of each branch. (I used to have status page for each branch in the wiki, but those were a bit heavy to maintain and nobody seemed to be interested about them). Maybe a single wiki page listing phase of each active branch on top, followed by documentation what each phase mean, would do? The list of phases is not necessarily exactly the same as ones listed in fc_version, but those could be a starting point.
Also have to think where to cross-reference such a new page, so that when the branch moves from a phase to another, we remember to update that page too.