Luke Boswell (Sep 19 2024 at 07:51): Luke Boswell (Sep 19 2024 at 07:51):We have the label "Good First Issues" which aims to provide a good on-ramp for potential contributors. The idea being that someone interested should be able to filter to these Issues, and they can see issues that are suitable for contributing as a newcomer.
I think I've been a bit eager with applying this label at times, and if we put a little more effort into these issues in particular, with the view to support a new contributor then this will be a nicer experience.
These issues aren't necessarily urgent bugs or features, and so someone should be able to take their time and really enjoy getting into the compiler.
To help guide us, I thought I might develop a bit of a checklist for writing these issues. This will help to be more deliberate with these issues.
I'm interested to know what people think. Would something like this be helpful? Have you experience doing something like this before? What things would you find most useful to get started with an issue if you were a newcomer? Any other ideas that could help us improve the contributor experience?
gist with draft checklist for Good First Issue label
Luke Boswell (Sep 19 2024 at 07:53):To be clear, when I think "checklist" I'm thinking more like a mental check that we've covered off on the bases, and not acceptance criteria or anything to be strictly applied.
Anton (Sep 20 2024 at 17:03):I like checklists :)
It does seem pretty large, I'm wondering if an issue that fulfills all those goals would already contain too much text. And thereby turn off new contributors. But we can try it out. see how the produced issues feel and iterate on it.
Last updated: Jun 16 2026 at 16:19 UTC