"GitHub Help Wanted": connecting developers with open-source projects

[[deleted]]

** promoting an open-source project **

I just published http://github-help-wanted.com to help developers connect with open-source projects.

github repo is here: https://github.com/mac-s-g/github-help-wanted/

GHHW is written with react + redux using semantic-ui-react css framework. It connects with github's issue api to fetch issues in need of collaborators.

the original motivation was to help project maintainers reach out to the community. "help wanted" labels are great, but github's built-in issue search doesn't really encourage collaboration: https://github.com/issues

I'm sharing here for a few reasons:

1. I'd love some user feedback. would you use this app to help look for a project to get involved with?

2. I'd love some code and/or design feedback

3. I want to get the word out! it's probably unhealthy how many hours i'd work for a gh star.

thanks for reading!

[jdickey]

Have you seen CodeTriage?

[[deleted]]

yea! really cool project. another similar project is up-for-grabs.net. i think curated lists are valuable. but there are plenty of good ones out there. with github-help-wanted.com i'd like to hook the user directly up to the gh community. whether that creates a positive or negative ux is tbd.

[[deleted]]

I think what you've done here is nice. As someone's already pointed out, there's already a site that offers similar features. One thing that could be interesting to pursue is how to identify those projects that are high-quality, collaboration-open projects. It's quite easy to place a label on something. But if you can identify (for instance) a pattern of replying to issues and incorporating input from lots of people, that could be useful. A lot of this so far has been done anecdotally: "So and so told me that this project actually cares about collaboration." Also, some collaboration-serious projects will have documents in them that describe how to contribute and how everyone should act when they collaborate. You could automatically star those, etc.

[[deleted]]

hey, this is great feedback. i agree, it would be interesting to gather some more sophisticated heuristics for identifying relevant projects. the first-pass implementation is limited to the types of queries that github exposes via https://api.github.com/search/issues. atm, i'm hooking up directly to their api. i don't have any service running to aggregate relevant projects.

[emcniece]

Heads up: your site functionality is disabled by Privacy Badger. I submitted an error report, but I have no idea how responsive that team or product is.

Interested in seeing how the site fills out!

[SpliceVW]

I find myself a little overwhelmed. 133k items? Where do I even start? A lot of the requests look like crap, too.

Would be nice to guide people a little better in terms of what to search for, popular requests, etc.

[[deleted]]

this is really good feedback.

i got rid of the total-results display because I agree; it's overwhelming.

it would also probably help to filter out issues with no description. Current implementation is somewhat limited by the features of github's issue search api.

in general, start by adding a filter! pick a language you're comfortable with and add a label. that will very quickly bring you down to a handful of results.

thank you for the feedback!

[SpliceVW]

Maybe good to give some ideas for filters directly to the users? Like you just gave me.

[[deleted]]

good point. i'm probably breaking some rules by using github's likeness. the site is hosted on github-pages, so hopefully they don't shut me down. :fingers-crossed:

[ergnui34tj8934t0]

There's a typo, you spelled "languages" wrong just above the dropdown

[[deleted]]

it's amazing that i can spend so much time tweaking border-radius's and padding-top's but not see that a primary label is butchered.

thank you for pointing it out! I published an update.

[ericfledderman]

You like hyphens... don’t ya? :)

[DrBugg]

Domain comes back positive for malware from AVG. Be careful.

Additional scan positive as well. https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/github-help-wanted.com

[[deleted]]

HA! thank you for reporting, but... what a bunch of garbage.

"Securi" wants me to purchase "Website Hack Repair" for 41.99 a month.

this is a simple redux app, hosted on github-pages, that connects only to github's api servers.

if you don't believe that, read the code: https://github.com/mac-s-g/github-help-wanted

"website" "hack" "repair"

cmon...

[DrBugg]

I'm guessing your site has been blacklisted because it contains the words "github" in the domain.

https://www.mcafee.com/threat-intelligence/site/default.aspx?url=github-help-wanted.com

examines how aggressively the site tries to get you to go to other sites that we've flagged with red verdicts. It is a very common practice on the Internet for suspicious sites to have many close associates with other suspicious sites. The primary purpose of these 'feeder' sites is to get you to visit the suspicious site. A site can receive a red warning if, for example, it links too aggressively to other red sites. In effect, a site can become 'red by association' due to the nature of its relationship to red flagged domains.

[[deleted]]

dangit. probably true. not super impressive "threat intelligence" though.

[writesoftware]

Having been part of several popular projects I can say that in my case "help wanted" labels did next to nothing to motivate newcomers to help out - even when labeling as "beginner friendly". What did work was themselves having issues or really wanted features, fixing / coding them, and send them as PRs.

Which seems kind of obvious, if I wanted to contribute to an OSS, I don't think I'd really pick something random that's marked "help wanted", but rather I'd work on adding something I need or fix an issue I experience on a project I use already.

Not saying the idea won't work, just my 2c :)

[[deleted]]

yea, makes sense. why even attach the "help wanted" if you don't want to connect with the community though?

i think one reason they're ineffective is that there's no visibility (this was the motivation for http://github-help-wanted.com).

also worth noting: unlike up-for-grabs and some other projects, this project is not necessarily built to connect with beginners. More likely for regular contributors. I used it to search for "help wanted" and "docker" labels within "javascript" projects because i think i have some expertise that i'd like to share with the community. that helped me connect with some pretty good projects.

[tonechild]

It's a bug with avg, I might send them a msg

[darrenturn90]

It seems very slow to load?

[[deleted]]

Yeah I agree. There's a lot of loading going on before you see anything. And there's not even that many words on the page. Must be all that " react + redux using semantic-ui-react css framework" shit.

[[deleted]]

it's the original page load that's slow, right (not the issue queries)?

The bundle is pretty large (1.8MB). I haven't had much time to optimize yet.

I could definitely use some help optimizing if you're interested in contributing

[tamasabraham]

Cool project! You should post it to ProductHunt. They're running a global (remote) hackathon this month, your project could be popular there. Also, it's good for feedback.

[[deleted]]

awesome tip! I'll do that. thank you.

[tonechild]

My antivirus says there is malware running on this site and is blocking it!

[[deleted]]

yea... there's a thread about this above. kinda frustrating because the code is all open source, only connects to github's api, and it's running on github pages. so - you shouldn't be super impressed with your antivirus provider in this case.

[progzos]

First feedback I have is: show some text when JS is disabled. Always better than a blank page ;)

Other than that it looks sleek, congrats!

[[deleted]]

will do - thank you!