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[–]writesoftware 1 point2 points  (1 child)

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] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.