Good-first-issues: How to get contributors to your project

Michelle Mannering - Aug 14 '20 - - Dev Community

Last week's Open Source Friday was a treat. We spoke to Nick Young from Project Contour. He gave us tonnes of insights into building and maintaining a project, as well as getting involved.

Aside from the fact we also spoke about Ghosts of Tsushima and other video games, Nick told us the importance of attracting good talent. We looked at Project Contour's good-first-issues for some insights. The key to good-first-issues is they need to be easy enough for people to understand. Nick said he - or any of the other maintainers - could easily attend to the good-first-issues.

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Instead, he tells us those issues are there as they are a great way to attract people to the project. It gives them something to work on that's not too difficult. Good-first-issues help provide an understanding of how Project Contour works, as well the culture of the team.

Nick says it's really important to check out these good-first-issues. One of the best pieces of advice Nick gave to budding contributors, is just "to start". Dive in and give it a go. Check out what language an open source project uses... hint; Project Contour uses mostly Go. If there's a project and you know the language just go for it! There's no better time to start than the present.

Check out this short Twitch clip to hear some of Nick's words of wisdom.

Tune in next time

If you missed out on this session, don't worry. Check out the full recording on our YouTube Channel. Plus, tune into our lives streams on our Twitch Channel every Friday, 2pm AEST and Friday, 9.30am PT. See you there!

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