· 6 min read
Hacktoberfest 2023: First experience as a maintainer
Originally written as a Hacktoberfest 2023 Writing Challenge on dev.to.
Hi friends! 👋
I’m Ayu, a tech blogger, front-end developer, and open source and tech community enthusiast based in the Netherlands.
I’m participating in Hacktoberfest for the 5th time this year. In my pledge post, I mentioned that this year, I want to focus more on supporting the open source community, especially beginners in open source.
I never imagined that I could go this far. But this year marks the first time I become a maintainer for projects in several tech communities. Not only did I get the opportunity to maintain projects and to learn more about open source, but my wish to support beginners in open source also came true! 🥰
How the journey began
My open source projects maintainer journey began with the Preptember 2023 challenge at the Virtual Coffee community. After a discussion with the Monthly Challenge Team, we proposed to the Core Team to create and maintain a repository for our members to practice open source and list repositories that we can verify for Hacktoberfest 2023.
It was the first time ever I prepared a repository to be ready for contribution as an open source project from scratch! 🤩
And it was a success! 🥳 I’m happy to see the enthusiasm of our members contributing to this repository.
Opportunities to maintain more projects
Towards Hacktoberfest, I had more opportunities to maintain projects in several tech communities, especially during the event.
OpenSauced
OpenSauced is a platform to help engineers to expand their resume through open source contributions.
I have been contributing to OpenSauced projects, from raising issues around the app to improving documentation in some repositories. These processes make me familiar with those repositories and give me a sense of how to improve things around the projects.
I didn’t think twice to say yes when OpenSauced offered to support them in maintaining some repositories. And it was an honor when they announced that I’m officially part of the Community Maintainers Team, together with Bekah HW and Christine Belzie.
Here are the projects that I help to maintain:
Intro to open source with OpenSauced
This repo contains a course designed to introduce beginners to open source and guide them through contributing to open source projects.
The OpenSauced guestbook
While folks are taking the Intro to Open Source with OpenSauced, they will put their skills into practice in one section by contributing to this guestbook repo.
Pizza lovers repository
After finishing the intro course and contributing to the guestbook repo, folks can expand their open source journey by contributing to our pizza-verse, the repository for Pizza lovers!
SheSharp
SheSharp is a non-profit foundation based in the Netherlands that makes it easier for all women and non-binary people to enter, stay, and grow in the tech industry.
My open source journey with SheSharp began with offering my help to support the community during Hacktoberfest through answering questions about open source, supporting beginners, and/or reviewing issues and PRs.
After raising an issue to improve their documentation, I collaborated intensively with the maintainers to improve the documentation and repositories to prepare them for Hacktoberfest contributions. I also actively gave ideas around open source and Hacktoberfest for our community. From there, I am trusted to be one of the maintainers for their open source projects.
One of the projects that I help maintain:
Knowledge hub
This repository contains a collection of resources covering different areas, from tech-related, such as software development, data analysis, product management, and quality assurance, to the general ones that can help others, such as housing in The Netherlands, supportive tech organizations, etc.
Virtual Coffee
Virtual Coffee is, and always will be, a genuine tech community that values and prioritizes supporting one another.
As Documentation Team Lead at Virtual Coffee Community, I regularly contribute to our repos to maintain documentation. However, this year is my first time co-maintain one of our repositories.
The repository that I help to maintain:
Podcast transcript
This repository contains the transcripts for the Virtual Coffee Podcast.
We aim to make our podcast transcripts more accessible and enjoyable to read by all audiences. At the moment, the transcripts are automatically generated, and they contain some mistakes. We need to edit the transcripts manually by listening to the episode and improving it.
The highs
One of my biggest accomplishments as a maintainer is learning to give feedback and communicate better with contributors.
For example, I walked a new contributor through resolving merge conflicts. I provided the steps as well as some necessary screenshots for better understanding in this PR.
By observing incoming contributions, I now have better eyes to see our contributors’ pain points and how to ease maintainers’ tasks.
For example, most contributors who contribute to the guestbook repo are beginners, and this repo has a high risk of getting merge conflicts. Facing merge conflicts is very scary and intimidating, not only for beginners but also for folks who already have experience in contributing.
So, I created an issue in OpenSauced’s guestbook repo to add a section for resolving conflicts and working on the documentation update. Adding this section would help contributors resolve the conflicts and help maintainers from having to walk through the process of resolving conflicts for each contributor.
Another thing is I created my first-ever video walkthrough to resolve conflicts in Virtual Coffee’s Preptember repo.
The lows
As a contributor, I understand the risk of getting a PR not accepted whenever we don’t ask to be assigned to an issue unless the contributing guidelines state otherwise.
But now, as a maintainer, I had my first experience closing a PR that didn’t follow the rules. Our guidelines clearly state that contributors must ask to be assigned to an issue before they can work on changes. However, a contributor submitted their PR without asking us to be assigned. That was heartbreaking, but rules are rules.
Growth
My communication and mentoring skills have greatly improved since becoming a maintainer. I have also become much better at putting myself in other people’s shoes and seeing things from their perspective.
I used to be disappointed in myself if I couldn’t contribute to a project because someone beat me to it (and this happened a lot! 😂) or the issues were interesting but too difficult for my expertise. Raising an issue or getting PRs merged gives us the feeling that we do contribute because we can show them, right?
But now, as a maintainer where most of my tasks are reviewing issues and incoming PRs, I have learned that giving feedback and ideas is very valuable in open source. We cannot showcase feedback and ideas, so it may not get enough recognition. But it helps people who need them most. What is more rewarding than helping others to learn and grow?
So far, the hardest part for me is learning to say no and reject PRs when they do not follow the rules. But, hey, it’s part of the growing process! 😄
Seeing contributors take or discuss feedback, learning something new, and getting their PRs merged gives me happiness. Discussing ideas and supporting other maintainers gives me joy.
I’m so much in my happy place right now because not only do I support them, but they also help me in learning and becoming a better maintainer (and contributor). 💙