I maintain a Python download manager. A week ago it had 1,500 stars and zero outside contributors. Today it has nine people with merged pull requests. Nothing about the code changed to cause that — what changed was the issue tracker, and I think the specific things I got wrong are more useful than the things I got right.
Issues that say what to touch
My first "good first issue" said the equivalent of "add tests." Nobody took it. The ones people actually take name the file, the function, the acceptance criteria, and — this turned out to matter most — whether it needs my OS. My project is Windows-only to run, but almost none of the open work requires Windows, and saying so per-issue unblocked most of the queue.
One big cleanup, cut into slices
I had 30 near-identical changes across three files. As one issue it sat there for weeks; nobody wants to sign up for 30 of anything. Split into four labelled slices with line ranges, three got claimed within a day.
