I think what would certainly help Python community is to have a prioritized list of specific small tasks that could be done to improve Python, grouped by contributor's skill level, e.g. tasks for complete newby, tasks for C hackers, tasks for folks who are good at writing docs etc., along with some information on how to get started. (I'm not sure if you have it already).

That will require some additional effort from Python core developement group - somebody would need to go through the bug tracker, categorize the tasks etc. - but it will probably mitigate some of the issues mentioned by jesse above ("Don't know how", "Don't know where" etc.)