PROCESS CHANGE: Improving Issue Labeling Practices

[prajjwalyd]

This proposal is based on one of the recommendations for enhancing the contributor experience in Knative, as outlined in the Contributor Experience Research 2024

Improving Issue Labeling Practices

• Actively identify and label more issues as 'good first issue' and 'help wanted'. This involves breaking down larger tasks into smaller, manageable chunks that are suitable for newcomers.
• Enhance the clarity and descriptiveness of issue labels to provide more context about the issue's nature, priority, specific area of consideration, and complexity.
• Develop a standardized process for labeling issues. This process should include guidelines on when and how to use each label. Maintainers and regular contributors are expected to follow this process to ensure consistency.

Why is it needed?

• Ease of Entry for New Contributors: Currently, new contributors often struggle to find appropriate entry-level issues, which can delay their engagement and lead to frustration. More 'good first issue' and 'help wanted' labels will provide a clear starting point, reducing the need for them to seek guidance from maintainers.
• Encouraging Independent Exploration: By having more clearly labeled issues, new contributors can independently identify tasks they are comfortable working on, fostering a sense of autonomy and confidence.
• Attracting and Retaining Contributors: An organized and beginner-friendly issue tracker can attract more contributors to the Knative community. It signals that the project is welcoming to newcomers and provides a supportive environment for learning and contributing.
• Efficiency for Maintainers: Improved labeling practices help maintainers by reducing the number of inquiries from new contributors about where to start. Combined with organized onboarding, this enables maintainers to concentrate more on reviewing contributions and offering guidance on more complex issues.

Implementation:

• Label Identification: Identify and label more issues as 'good first issue' and 'help wanted'. This may include breaking down of bigger tasks into smaller manageable chunks suitable for beginners.
• Label Description: Enhance the clarity and descriptiveness of issue labels to provide more context so that contributors get an idea of what they are dealing with.
• Standardized Process: Develop a standardized process for labeling issues and train maintainers and contributors on its usage. Encourage every maintainer to create more beginner-friendly issues regularly to ensure a continuous supply.

[aliok]

We know we need more good-first-issues, but the problem is that we don't have a process right now. I mean, we don't do issue triaging or something as a group session, where we can go over the issues and mark them as such.

I know people triage issues as individuals, but that's not sustainable.

Prerequisite for this task is to have proper issue triaging meetings.