Hacktoberfest has been an unmitigated disaster for me thus far

I've submitted a grand total of 1 pull request, and it has been sitting there idle since then. Furthermore, I have been so gosh-darn busy that I have yet to even attempt something else.

So much for that, I suppose... but there's another problem: I am not very good at finding projects I might like to contribute to, and if I knew how to use GitHub search to find them, I'd probably be in better shape than I am now.

Anyone have tips for operating GitHub's search engine?

Comments

[Yash Dave]

Hey Eric, don't worry you are 1 PR closer to completing the challenge already! You still have tons of days to complete the challenge 😄. Coming to finding projects you might like to contribute to, did you know Dev has a tag for the same called #contributorswanted

#contributorswanted

For open source maintainers to get together with willing contributors.

you could check that out for some projects that you might like.

Another awesome thing GitHub has is an "Explore Repositories" Section on its dashboard to the right on desktop and as a tab on mobile.

It will suggest you repositories based on topics and repositories that you have starred and generally suggest you some good first issues too if you are a beginner.

Finally, Hacktoberfest has a Hacktoberfest Projects section too where you can select the language of your choice and click browse more to get you to a GitHub filter link.

[Anton Rusak]

Well you might use the software made to find projects to contribute to :)

A few examples:
up-for-grabs.net/
github.com/cutenode/good-first-issue

Also you may search github for issues labelled 'up-for-grabs', 'help wanted', 'hacktoberfest', 'good first issue'. Those are usually easy to understand and implement.

Good luck with contributing to open source!

[Blake Sweezy]

The way that I use GitHub search is by using the following string:

is:open is:issue archived:false label:hacktoberfest

It indexes all issues that are not archived, open, and have a label of "hacktoberfest".

[Si]

If it helps - you can head on over to CodeTips RSS-Twitter if you want to contribute.

It's a relatively small/young/immature codebase, but it has a few enhancements under issues. Some are just documentation.

[Nicolás Marcelo Grosso]

You can use Codetriage, it's a nice tool to find projects you might be intrested in, it also emails you in a weekly schedule if you want more projects.
you can also learn how to use the #hastags for github issues, like #beginners or #goodfirstissue as some other devs already said, my tip is, use hacktober to try all this stuff while you can and don't worry to make mistakes, you're learning and it's okay

[Pranjal Agnihotri {..❤️}]

Maybe you can build a GitHub project finding tool for yourself using it's API ✌️

[Eric Ahnell]

Maybe... web development isn't my strong suit, and I don't have permission to use the API just yet, so I need to clear a few hurdles first. It is something I'd consider when I have time to dedicate to it, though!

[Pranjal Agnihotri {..❤️}]

github.com/search?l=JavaScript&o=d...

I used this to search for Hacktoberfest. Contribute more and you will be better at web development 😀

[Shmavon Gazanchyan]

Maybe this might help: github.com/MunGell/awesome-for-beg...

(disclosure: I am related to that repo...)

[Eric Ahnell]

Thanks, everyone - these are all wonderful suggestions! I feel like a gorilla just got off my back.

[Aviral Agarwal]

If you are interested you can contribute to my repository-
github.com/Aviral14/Games
It's a collection of fun games made using pygame. Moreover it has some beginner friendly issues.