Improve the process of completing "good first issues"

[donovanglover]

Some of the older good first issues have people that wanted to contribute, yet haven't done so yet. These issues feel abandoned and it's impossible to tell whether or not someone still wants to work on it.

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In the short term, I propose that all old issues are bumped with a reminder that those involved can still contribute. Then:

1. If an issue is still being worked on, remind them that they can ask questions.
2. Otherwise, make a comment suggesting that someone else can take on the issue.

The reminder IMO should state the following:

1. They can still contribute (and should reply whether they want to or not).
2. If no response is given within a set amount of time, other people interested in completing the issue should be encouraged to try it. This prevents the guilt of "taking someone else's issue".
3. If they're having any problems with contributing, they're free to ask questions.

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And in the long term:

1. Ask the user that wants to make a contribution if they're still working on the issue after a set amount of time (14 days of inactivity? 30 days?). This gives them enough time to think about the issue and figure out which questions they need to ask in order to make the pull request happen.
2. Use an "assigned" tag to note that an issue is currently being worked on. Remove the assigned tag after a long period of inactivity or if the user no longer wants to work on the issue.

With these changes in place, more people are encouraged to take on older, inactive issues. Additionally, those that do take on issues are asking more questions and therefore more engaged in the process.

[domenic]

I'm hesitant to sign up for adding too much process here. However, I see particular value in asking people who have said "I'll work on this" if they're still interested, and if they don't respond, making it clear on the thread that it is still up for grabs. I guess I'd been assuming people would see that there's no activity in a long time, and feel free to chime in and say they're taking it over, but that's not a good assumption.

I don't see a need to bump or do anything with "unclaimed" old issues though.

[domenic]

I believe I've asked for updates on all the seemingly-claimed issues I could find.

[donovanglover]

Thanks for bumping the respective issues. All of my suggestions are just ideas; I don't want them to be more trouble than they're worth.

An alternative could be to just update CONTRIBUTING.md with a sentence explaining that contributions to older (inactive) issues are always welcome.

[annevk]

That seems like a good idea. I'm having a little bit of trouble figuring out where to put it in that document though. Maybe we should add a new section at the start similar to what whatwg/html/CONTRIBUTING.md has that explains good first issues and such?

[donovanglover]

I think it's as simple as adding a sentence somewhere before the Pull Requests section.

Could also have a "Getting Started" section that describes the process of finding an issue to contribute to and starting a discussion before contributing to it.

[domfarolino]

@annevk I know that we briefly talk about the idea of "good first issues" in LABELS.md, should we further elaborate on this in the meta/CONTRIBUTING?

My thoughts on this are that we can optionally remove the text about "good first issues" from whatwg/html/CONTRIBUTING, and summarize it (and maybe a little more info) in something like a new "Getting Started" section as @gloverdonovan mentioned, here in whatwg/meta/CONTRIBUTING; how does this sound? Also we don't have to remove anything from HTML's CONTRIBUTING docs, but since they link here, if we add that text here I figured the deduplication would make sense. Thoughts?

[annevk]

Sounds good to me.

[donovanglover]

I agree with @domfarolino. Mind if I work on this?

[domfarolino]

Go for it! (That is, if you were asking me)

[annevk]

@gloverdonovan feel free to assume you can take stuff going forward. "Don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness." (It does seem good to leave a note you'll be working on it though.)

[annevk]

I believe this is generally working well now. If there are further improvements we can make let's discuss those in a new issue.