google-gemini / google-gemini/gemini-cli

CONTRIBUTING.md should place higher expectations on the community.

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#21,718 34 comments 5 reactions 1 assignee Claimed by @psinha40898 View on GitHub
🔒 maintainer only area/documentation kind/customer-issue priority/p3 status/bot-triaged
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Description

[Contributing]

It looks like people are trying to gamify the system of issue assignment. The purpose of issues requiring a "help wanted" label is to prevent people from unnecessarily working on things that the team does not want an external contribution for. The purpose is NOT to reward someone who was lucky enough to see the issue get labeled.

It seems like people are snagging issues by assigning themselves in situations where we should be looking out for each other.

These are all from JUST the first page of "help wanted" issues:

In all of these issues the issue author does heavy lifting identifying issue in detail and links a PR before it is labeled help wanted. Someone else assigns and opens a PR when it's clear the author deserved the assignment.
#21084
#20941

In all of these issues someone is clearly communicating with respect and grace before the issue is labeled. Someone else self-assigns as soon as they can and does not communicate.
#20839
#20730
#20661
#20615

There are plenty more examples of unideal community behavior, but I focused on citing only the most obvious cases.

[Proposed Solutions]
The CONTRIBUTING.md should have two small modifications
1) Those who file issues should be encouraged to state whether they want to be the ones to contribute once the issue is labeled.
2) There should be a general clause where external community members are required to look out for each other. **Not everything needs a hard rule. We can respect each other and show some compassion and understanding.**

These are some contributors who have shown grace and respect in situations where they could have leaned on the rules to try and benefit themselves but chose not to
@ishaanxgupta (#20675)
@Famous077 (#20967)

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

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