New Contributors
Question: How many contributors are making their first contribution to a given project and who are they?
Description
An increase or decline in new contributors can be an early indicator of project health. Understanding the behavior and barriers of new community members requires knowing who they are -- helping to welcome new contributors and thank them for their efforts.
This is a specific implementation of the Contributors metric.
Objectives
An increase or decline in new contributors can be an early indicator of project health. Understanding the behavior and barriers of new community members requires knowing who they are. Welcome new contributors and thank them for their first contribution.
Implementation
For each Contributor, only consider their first contribution.
Filters
Period of Time: When was the first contribution made.
By location of engagement. For example:
- Repository authors
- Issue authors
- Code review participants
- Mailing list authors
- Event participants
- IRC authors
- Blog authors
- By release cycle
- Timeframe of activity in the project, e.g, find new contributors
- Programming languages of the project
- Role or function in project
Stage of engagement (e.g., opening pull request vs. getting it accepted).
Visualizations
Tools Providing the Metric
References
https://opensource.com/article/17/4/encourage-new-contributors
To edit this metric please submit a Change Request here: https://github.com/chaoss/wg-evolution/blob/main/focus-areas/community-growth/new-contributors.md
To reference this metric in software or publications please use this stable URL: https://chaoss.community/?p=3613
The usage and dissemination of health metrics may lead to privacy violations. Organizations may be exposed to risks. These risks may flow from compliance with the GDPR in the EU, with state law in the US, or with other laws. There may also be contractual risks flowing from terms of service for data providers such as GitHub and GitLab. The usage of metrics must be examined for risk and potential data ethics problems. Please see CHAOSS Data Ethics document for additional guidance.