A Contributor’s Guide to a GitPOAP
How to make a meaningful impact & earn a GitPOAP!
Woo! You want to contribute to an open-source project and earn a GitPOAP! If you’re not a developer, this doc will help you understand how to provide meaningful contributions to open-source software projects.
Earning a GitPOAP is not quick! GitPOAPs are proof of accomplishment and there will be some work involved in earning them. They will, however, create a digital resume for you that shows that you’re willing and able to do the work necessary to help build something.
First, you need to learn how to use GitHub
You want to benefit these projects and take work off their plates — submitting a poorly formatted pull request creates more work for them and they might reject the PR.
- How to write and format on GitHub (using markdown)
- Exploring projects to contribute to
- How to understand and handle GitHub “Issues”
Contributing without knowing how to code
A common misconception about contributing to open source projects is that you need to be a coder. There are other opportunities for meaningful contributions! For example:
- First and foremost — go through the project’s Github “Issues”. They’ll tell you what the project is actively looking to solve. It’s usually mostly code, but sometimes there will be a non-code related issue (’we need a tutorial on how to do X’)
- Writing & Documentation ✒️
✒ Update documentation — sometimes their website / app / protocol gets updated but their docs don’t reflect it. Did a 15% fee change to 12%? Go make sure their docs are updated, too!
️✒ Create how-to guides/tutorials — get familiar with the project! Use their app. If something’s confusing, write a guide.
✒ Help with translation tasks — ask the project if they’d like translations for their docs. Sometimes it’s welcome, sometimes they don’t need any. - Organization 📑
✒ review old issues, link to duplicate issues, etc. Don’t organize things that don’t need organization, but if there are 15 issues that are obviously related to the same topic, and you’re familiar with how GitHub issues work, link these issues.
How do I create a pull request?
Pull requests are used to propose changes in a repository. The changes are proposed in a branch which ensures that the default branch only contains finished & approved work.
💡 Check out GitHub’s docs for an explanation of pull requests and a step-by-step guide to creating a pull request!
What makes a good pull request?
- It should create value — this could be a new feature, new information, fixing something unclear, or making a doc more readable.
- The title should reflect the work within the PR and the summary should clearly articulate the context of the change.
- The commit message should be well-written and clearly articulate the development of the work.
- The code within the PR should be in-line with the project teams’ best practices.
What should I avoid?
- It’s important to remember that any pull request you create will be reviewed by the project maintainer(s)! Make sure you are proposing meaningful changes that are worth their time and will have a positive impact on the project.
- More specifically, avoid submitting tiny word / grammar changes / capitalization tweaks that don’t benefit the project.
Our goal is to benefit the project — if someone is submitting too many small, optional fixes, it creates more work for the maintainers and the user may be banned from earning GitPOAPs in the future 😔 We definitely don’t want to do that! If you have any questions about the value of your pull request, feel free to ask in the GitPOAP discord — we’re happy to offer advice!
What’s next?
Start contributing to earn a GitPOAP & reference the GitHub Docs for additional educational material to help you. Don’t forget to bring a towel.
