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Dhiraj Sharma edited this page Jan 27, 2019 · 6 revisions

This page lists "reusable" or "multiple use" tasks that we are encouraging collaborators to do, to learn how to be part of a healthy and supportive collaborative community. All Public Lab reviewers, mentors, and project leaders do these tasks and we are very happy to share them.

It feels great to help someone else learn some new skills and feel good about their contributions! 🎉

Review & troubleshoot a newcomer's pull request

Overview

As part of our ongoing work to welcome newcomers, we need to help them make well-formatted pull requests, and troubleshoot the issues they encounter.

Objective

This will help newcomers get started in a codebase they may not be familiar with, and help get PRs ready to merge! 🔍 🕵️

Task type: Coding

Links: https://github.com/publiclab/mapknitter/issues/309


Add screenshots or GIFs to open pull requests to illustrate new features

Overview

With so many new contributors (yay! 🙌) we need help reviewing newly submitted code! One way to help is to download someone's code and take a screenshot to confirm it works.

Objective

This will help newcomers get started in a codebase they may not be familiar with, and help get PRs ready to merge! 🔍 🕵️

Task type: Documentation

Links: https://github.com/publiclab/mapknitter/issues/310


Help add code links to existing issues

Overview

As part of our ongoing work to welcome newcomers, and to produce more welcoming first timers only issues, we need to add URLs leading to specific lines of code, to many issues.

Objective

This will help newcomers get started in a codebase they may not be familiar with, and help get issues closer to completion! 🔍 🕵️

Task type: Documentation/Training

Links: https://github.com/publiclab/mapknitter/issues/311


Create a welcoming "first-timers-only" issue to invite new software contributors

Overview

One way we've been doing this is through first-timers-only issues, which are written in a very engaging, welcoming way, far differently than the usual "just report the bug" type of GitHub issue. To read more about these, check out firsttimersonly.com (the lead image is from their site), which really captures how and why this works, and is beginning to be a movement in open source coding outreach! Beyond the extra welcome, this also includes getting such well-formatted issues out in front of lots of people who may be contributing to open source software for the very first time.

It takes a LOT of work to make a good issue of this type, and we often walk through each step required to actually make the requested changes -- the point is to help newcomers understand that a) they're welcome, and b) what the collaboration workflow looks like.

Objective

This will help newcomers get started in a codebase they may not be familiar with, expand our community, and help get issues closer to completion! 🔍 🕵️

Task type: Documentation/Training

Links: https://publiclab.org/notes/warren/10-31-2016/create-a-welcoming-first-timers-only-issue-to-invite-new-software-contributors

Suggest new changes & Report Bugs

Overview

Find different suggestions/bugs in various fields like testing, coding, documentation etc. and create an issue for them. This will help in doing early bug fixes.

Objective

This will help users to use bug free code. This will increase the overall experience of the users with Public Labs.

Task type: Coding/Outreachy

Links: https://github.com/publiclab/mapknitter/issues/312