You do not, in fact, have to become an official part of Nupedia in any of the above capacities in order to participate; there are a number of ways in which you can help while remaining "in the background."  Here are a few:

• Comment on articles undergoing open review or open copyediting.  You can even do this without signing in (though your comments will be humorously credited to "Anonymous Coward").  You can find these articles by skimming our articles in progress page, our production area, or our copyediting area.  If you're possibly interested, just go to those pages and browse around a bit.

• Join Nupedia mailing lists in your areas of interest, and contribute comments about the format and policy of articles.

• Help editors find lead reviewers.  There is particularly a need for this in the General and Other category.  Write the editor of an area you're interested in and let him or her know that you're available.

• Publicize Nupedia.  There are many ways to do this, of course: put up links to Nupedia from your web pages; post announcements (after getting permission, of course) on specialized mailing lists; post our (RTF format) flyer in academic department bulletin boards and other places; talk to friends about the project; etc.

• There is a growing need for graphics and sound files associated with existing articles.