Num-Focus Hackathon

[Kyle Mandli]

NumFOCUS is preparing for an online hack-a-thon next month and has some suggestions that I thought would be good to get people interested more generally in contributing:

Hacktoberfest is right around the corner! I wanted to take a moment to encourage you to do a once-over of your repos to prepare for an influx of new contributors.
Here are some helpful hints:
• Clear up whether labeled issues are being worked on or open for someone to grab"The downside is that a lot of the labeled issues have often already been grabbed in the comments by other new contributors, and it isn’t always clear whether or not they are still working on them, sometimes months later."
• Create (or refresh) a page on your website or in your documentation specifically devoted to HacktoberfestIt's helpful to provide basic information to help new contributors get started, for example by linking to https://github.com/firstcontributions/first-contributions
• Check to be sure that you have open issues, especially documentation issues, that are beginner-friendlyOften for a first-time open source contributor, docs issues are the most straightforward. Since one of the biggest hurdles to OSS contributing is just getting one's environment set up correctly, we want the issue itself to be super duper straightforward.
• Promote your participation on your discussion channels, and point newcomers to the best places to go for helpGetting ahead of the confused newbie by telling them where to go for assistance helps to cut down on misdirected forum/mailing list traffic.