An Initial Exploration of the “Good First Issue” Label for Newcomer Developers
Jan Willem David Alderliesten, Andy Zaidman · 2021
In order to help newcomers to open source projects identify tasks that are suitable to them and their level of expertise within the project, issues can get thegoodfirstissuelabel on theGitHubplatform. In this paper we report on a preliminary investigation ofgoodfirstissuesin terms of how they effective they are for developer onboarding and task completion. We find that, although goodfirstissuesare effective at developer onboarding, and developers perceivegoodfirstissuesas being useful, changes can be made to the types of tasks suggested as good first issues to match the types of initial contributions made by newcomers. This paper is based on the MSc thesis of J.W.D. Alderliesten.