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carltongibson committed Oct 3, 2024
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46 changes: 46 additions & 0 deletions source/open-source/I-dont-know-either.rst
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===================
I don't know either
===================

Folks often feel lost getting into open source, getting into maintaining…

How am I supposed to know what to do?

I think one of the biggest things we can do to help is be totally
straightforward: 90% of the time, **I don't know either**.

Django gets about 5 new issue reports a day, every day. When I was a Django
Fellow, it was a core role to triage these tickets: are they valid?

Imagine, some report about, I don't know, how read-only fields are rendered in
the admin UI. *Can we change it so that X?*

Say it with me: **I don't know**.

The only option was to roll-up my sleeves and dig in. Sometime later I'd be
able to say something sensible. Most times at least.

But all that work was largely invisible. I know because I see it on other repos
when I report an issue, from the outside it looks (if you don't know better)
like I just had that final answer to hand before I began. That I just knocked
it off.

The reality couldn't be further from the truth. **I didn't know**. Letting
people see that can make contributing feel an awful lot more accessibile.

In my `Getting Started Contributing to Django Workshop
<https://github.com/carltongibson/djangocon-sprints>`_ that I've run at a few
DjangoCons, I try to get people to take the time to really dig into a issue. I
say they need to become the *world expert* on that issue. By doing that, it's
clear how they can have something to offer, **even though they only just
started contributing**.

I think the same applies to new maintainers. **I don't know either**, so it's
OK that you're not sure what you need to do here. We'll work it out.

I think that can help with the initial fear. It's OK. We all feel like this.

What else can we do here?

Want to chat about this? `Over here <https://github.com/carltongibson/notes/discussions/33>`_ 👋

1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions source/open-source/index.rst
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:caption: Contents:

maintainers-lifecycle
I-dont-know-either

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