please mark good first issues in your projects

[Sumana Harihareswara]

Warehouse is attracting several newer contributors including people new
to open source, which is great. As Warehouse matures, we have fewer and
fewer easy small bugs *in the Python side* left. (So, we have more work
for new frontend contributors, and less for Pythonists.)

I'd love to refer these folks to other parts of the Python packaging and
distribution ecosystem so we can improve the whole toolchain. Right now
there are 29 open issues in PyPA projects on GitHub marked "good first
issue", 11 in Warehouse and most of the rest in pip:

https://github.com/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=user%3Apypa+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22good+first+issue%22+

I'm totally fine with giving new volunteers teensy tiny doc fix tasks,
"manually test this functionality" tasks, and "check whether this bug is
still reproducible" tasks, in case you want to write up some of those.
Here's a template we use to make good first issues in Warehouse, in case
you want to emulate it:
https://github.com/pypa/warehouse/issues/new?template=good-first-issue.md


**Good First Issue**: This issue is good for first time contributors. If
you've already contributed to Warehouse, please work on [another issue
without this
label](https://github.com/pypa/warehouse/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+-label%3A%22good+first+issue%22)
instead. If there is not a corresponding pull request for this issue, it
is up for grabs. For directions for getting set up, see our [Getting
Started Guide](https://warehouse.pypa.io/development/getting-started/).
If you are working on this issue and have questions, please feel free to
ask them here, [`#pypa-dev` on
Freenode](https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23pypa-dev), or the
[pypa-dev mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pypa-dev).


If your project isn't under https://github.com/pypa , but you want to
publicize your good first issues, reply to this thread? Thanks.

[Sumana Harihareswara]

In my experience (not just here but within Zulip, Wikimedia, Mailman,
and other projects), this depends on the project's maintainers.

If maintainers actively put the word out that a project is seeking new
volunteers, respond to new questions and patches within a few days, and
comment on finished issues to say "great! want another?", volunteers
work through the "good first issues" queue steadily and it needs regular
replenishment. It is worth taking a fresh look at the queue every month
or two to double-check whether any of the open issues labelled "good
first issue" are harder than they first appeared, then remove the label
with an explanatory comment.

(My further advice on stuff like this -- "How To Improve Bus Factor In
Your Open Source Project", "How to Teach And Include Volunteers who
Write Poor Patches", "Inclusive-Or: Hospitality in Bug Tracking", etc.
-- are at my resources page https://changeset.nyc/resources.html .)
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Warehouse project manager
Changeset Consulting
https://changeset.nyc

Do these kind of issues ever linger on unreasonably, or do enough
voluneteers step up to keep them low? Do you expire that label after a few
months?
I don't have any feedback on your actual request, I'm mostly curious of the
process/interplay around feeding new users work without introduce excessive
delay or otherwise.
Thanks,

Post by Sumana Harihareswara
Warehouse is attracting several newer contributors including people new
to open source, which is great. As Warehouse matures, we have fewer and
fewer easy small bugs *in the Python side* left. (So, we have more work
for new frontend contributors, and less for Pythonists.)
I'd love to refer these folks to other parts of the Python packaging and
distribution ecosystem so we can improve the whole toolchain. Right now
there are 29 open issues in PyPA projects on GitHub marked "good first
https://github.com/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=user%3Apypa+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22good+first+issue%22+
I'm totally fine with giving new volunteers teensy tiny doc fix tasks,
"manually test this functionality" tasks, and "check whether this bug is
still reproducible" tasks, in case you want to write up some of those.
Here's a template we use to make good first issues in Warehouse, in case
https://github.com/pypa/warehouse/issues/new?template=good-first-issue.md
**Good First Issue**: This issue is good for first time contributors. If
you've already contributed to Warehouse, please work on [another issue
without this
label](
https://github.com/pypa/warehouse/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+-label%3A%22good+first+issue%22
)
instead. If there is not a corresponding pull request for this issue, it
is up for grabs. For directions for getting set up, see our [Getting
Started Guide](https://warehouse.pypa.io/development/getting-started/).
If you are working on this issue and have questions, please feel free to
ask them here, [`#pypa-dev` on
Freenode](https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23pypa-dev), or the
[pypa-dev mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pypa-dev).
If your project isn't under https://github.com/pypa , but you want to
publicize your good first issues, reply to this thread? Thanks.
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Warehouse project manager
Changeset Consulting
https://changeset.nyc