Suggestion: Good First Issues

Beman Project Development
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We will get a lot of curious and new contributors to this project. I think it’s a good idea to clearly identify issues that would be suitable for those kinds of contributors. I’m thinking of people who might just be hearing about the Beman Project and probably haven’t attended a Zoom call or hackathon or anything yet.

I think it’s a good idea to curate and tag relevant issues to make it easy to plug in and make an impact. Keys details that I think help:

  • Ensure the issue is actionable:
    • Answer: What is the goal for the issue?
    • Provide clear direction about when the issue can be objectively considered complete
    • Avoid issues with design questions or especially active discussion
    • (Optionally) Motivate: Why is this a good issue to work on? Is it cool? Does it save a lot of time? What?
  • Label relevant issues with “good first issue”
  • Identify a mentor for those issues, identifying them on the issue, and labelling the issue “mentoring-available”

I took a pass at this with my latest issue. See Beman Test Standards · Issue #49 · beman-project/beman (github.com) for an example.

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Looks like GitHub has a nice little shortcut for finding good first issues:

https://github.com/beman-project/beman/contribute

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These are great ideas. Anyone have ideas on how we can make this guidance available when people are creating issues?

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There’s no silver bullet I am aware of. But I have seen these all work in different situations:

  • Specific people take the responsibility to keep these issues curated.
  • Regular agenda items in group meetings watch recent issue activity and provide issue grooming
  • Issue templates include check boxes or questions to answer to nudge issue creators to consider these concerns. This could include a link to any existing standards or otherwise written guidance.

Does anyone else have ideas or experiences on maintaining standards for good issues?