Hi all, I think we could make it easier for people to find tasks that can be their first contribution to Geode. The wiki page on how to contribute <https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/GEODE/How+to+Contribute> has a list of suggested projects. Most of those are pretty ambitious and likely would be overwhelming to first time contributors. There also is a link to tickets labeled with "Starter" <https://issues.apache.org/jira/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20Geode%20AND%20labels%20%3D%20starter%20AND%20status%20in%20%28Open%2C%20%22In%20Progress%22%2C%20Reopened%29>. I think the later is probably a much better angle for someone to start contributing to Geode. Unfortunately there was less than a handful of tickets labeled as starter tickets.
My suggestion is to find tickets that strike a healthy balance between being - simple enough that someone new to the code base can realistically take them on - rewarding enough that someone can feel a sense of accomplishment after having their PR merged - small enough that it can be accomplished in an evening or at most a long weekend - unlikely to result in conflicts with larger efforts that someone is already undertaking It would be great to have a variety of tickets that have different levels of complexity and required effort to allow new contributors of varying experience levels to start contributing meaningfully and maybe even support somewhat of a progression curve for someone who wants to become a regular contributor or even committer. I'd also suggest to not allow the list to grow too large. If the list gets bigger than 20-30 tickets it might get too hard to keep a clear grasp on it and the risk of having tickets that aren't relevant anymore increases. Nothing would be more frustrating to a new contributor than investing their personal time just to find out that it was wasted. So let's be mindful of not using this as a dumping ground for everything we'd like to see, but know we'll never get to. I already labeled a few more tickets as starter. Please feel free to validate that I didn't violate my own suggestions in doing so. Thoughts?
