diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 52c1ddda..03d7f82e 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -13,6 +13,8 @@ Before submitting the PR review that you have included the following changes, wh
 
 ## Releases
 
+This section is only applicable to "maintainers". PR "contributors" do not need to follow the below procedure.
+
 As Elastalert 2 is a community-maintained project, releases will typically contain unrelated contributions without a common theme. It's up to the maintainers to determine when the project is ready for a release, however, if you are looking to use a newly merged feature that hasn't yet been released, feel free to open a [discussion][5] and let us know.
 
 Maintainers, when creating a new release, follow the procedure below: