Now that I got the hack of it, I seriously considered to put some more effort in the perl5-porters movement. I was not scared away by rumours of the list being very unfriendly and flame wars being more common than found on other lists.
First thing to do is be a good listener. Don't join every discussion you see flying by, and only respond if you know what you're talking about. If you are sure, don't be afraid to be scared away, but always use funded arguments to explain what you mean. Don't be surprised if it turns out that the old members realy listen to you and see you as a serious participant in the development of Perl.
I wanted to join perl5-porters to take over Ilya's position. Hmmmm. So much for aiming too high.
There are several reasons why this did not happen.
What happened is that the list somehow noticed my knowledge of shell and awk programming (the ol' unix style commands) and that I wasn't scared of the complexity of Perl's configuration scheme (the Configure script).
Eventually you'll be asked to help out in the (sub)field(s) where you've proven to have knowledge of or insight in.
Now that Perl6 has taken a serious start, don't think perl5 doesn't need any more attention. We do still need enthousiastic people to make perl the language we all want, not scaring away people, but chasing away the bugs. Start being a list-lurker tomorrow and join perl5-porters next month!
Look throught the TODO list to check if there is an unexplored field left alone so far that yearns for your attention.
We'd like to extend the bug squashing team too