Real data from 240 PRs, 72 merges, and 90 rejections — plus the behavioral psychology that explains why some contributions succeed while others die in review purgatory.
TL;DR: After submitting 240 PRs to 50+ open source repos and tracking every single outcome, I discovered that getting merged has almost nothing to do with code quality. It's about psychology, timing, and understanding the invisible social contracts that govern open source. Here's the data, the patterns, and the playbook that took my acceptance rate from 15% to 45%.
The Brutal Numbers
Let me start with the uncomfortable truth that most "how to contribute to open source" articles won't tell you:
Metric
