More and more people are getting involved with open source. Some would like to contribute code, other improve documentation, third test new feature...
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We're making an effort to use
good first issueand difficulty tags more effectively in DEV's repo.github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/...
There are definitely some older issues in there, but if you are struggling to find places to contribute DM me and I'll help. :)
What if we had a weekly post on DEV where we plucked a bunch of "good first issues" and added a few sentences about why each might be a good first one and who it might be good for?
Having that extra editorial step might be a decent way for people to skim and discover, and also know that the issues are not stale because we're publishing about them today.
That sounds fantastic! ❤
I will also encourage the idea of restricting somehow these issues to "first timers" only. It could be by politely rejecting the PRs of people who are not first time contributors (unless the issue is somehow critical). It could also be by saying that an issue can be taken by a first-time contributor within a month of its creation. Afterwards it's open for everyone.
I think that a post like that will have a positive effect. You can give it a try a few times and see if it works :)
That great sound Ben, I would for help for sure, I tried helping you guys out a few times, but never found a relevant issue for me. This would make it a lot easier for people like me.
I didn't actually realise that Dev.to was open source until your email came through. Now I love it even more 😍
Thanks for making the effort to accommodate first-time contributors.
I wrote this post mostly because I remembered how it was when I first started contributing to open source. I would open the Issues page on some repo and look for the
good first issuelabel. Often times the results were either issues that sounded too complicated or there were already related PRs.We sometimes talk about how we want more people to get involved but don't really provide guidance and/or tasks to get them started.
didi.land has only one
good first issue, I am trying to build a community from the ground up so everything must involve all levels of experience. But at this stage all the issues are around making the repository "habitable" for others and stabilizing the complexities, so a good first issue actually means, good if you have specialist knowledge on a certain area, I really want that to change and bring in beginners and experts. Thanks for raising this post.Good luck with didi. I hope it will grow to a welcoming community.
It's tricky in the beginning of a project. There are still many moving parts and things are constantly changing. So it might be hard to specify what exactly is a good first issue. But even though there are still some rough edges, the overall complexity is simpler in the beginning. So it's usually a lot easier for a completely new person to get involved with the project. The questions during that stage are more like Why should I get involved? What's so valuable about the project/community?
It's definitely hard for maintainers to find a balance between development and attracting of new contributors. I don't have much experience with it personally but I hope you'll find a solution :)
The link to your blog at the top is broken ;)
Thanks for letting me know. It's fixed now :)
It can be kinda wacky - because a
good first issueis often something that can be fixed with the same amount of time as deciding it's a good first issue and placing the tag. Then, when you fix it - (it's your first issue) - so, often - you'll get a message like: "Thanks: make a better pull request and x and y - and we'll look at it." "OK great, so - just change this other things and make another pull request and I think we might be able to merge this." There might be a lot of back and forth between 5 people. It's hard - even when you are actually a nice person, to sound human. (so many messages and stuff!)Open source is great! and encouraging people to get started is great. Maybe there are some other ways to facilitate this. Would a short video chat with 10 little fixes once a month and a little background on what to do, and why to do it clarify things better than a tag.
We don't have the answer - but we do have the question: is there a better way? What is the goal? What are the steps to that goal?
So recognisable! It's great you brought this up. Lots of people (including myself) would love to contribute but 'look for the good first issue tag' just isn't cutting it. To any projects who would like to encourage newcomers to contribute: it would mean the world if you could provide some more clarification on those issues.
Yeah, it's a problem. And Hacktoberfest is just around the corner where many people will search for a "good first issue" to start contributing to open source.
If someone wants to contribute to Golang + React project, we have a lot of good first issues at - github.com/vivekweb2013/gitnoter/i...