The reason I suggest that is that with the way code hosting services like GitHub work, the README changes from something people may read for local development after they've already cloned the repo to instead being the main landing page for the repo.
That means it becomes a good place to point out things like:
- the location of the main dev guide
- the issue tracker
- the communications channels
- the PSF CLA (and the need to sign it for non-trivial contributions)
I wonder if some of these bits of information could go in a GitHub pull request template:
That way they get presented to the contributor as soon as they hit the "new pull request" button.
My expectation is that the README will get tweaked and we will add a CONTRIBUTING file. As for PR templates, that's going to depend on what kind of workflow we end up with in terms of reviewing.