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Monthly Challenge for September, 2022: Preptember! Get open source ready.

This month, we have two tracks. Maintainers will be reviewing their open source repos with our checklist to make sure their projects are ready for Hacktoberfest contributions, and our contributors will be looking at their favorite repos, evaluating them based on the guide, and writing good issues as needed to fulfill the criteria.

Challenge Team Leads & Facilitators: BekahHW & Dan Ott

Theme

Get ready for open source!

Challenge

Maintainers: Evaluate your open source project and complete the checklist before the end of September.

Contributors: Following the guide, evaluate an open-source project to VC-verify it as a good project to contribute to. If the repository doesn't meet our standards, create and submit good issues to suggest updates.

Maintainers

Preparing your open source project for contributions is one of the best ways to create a community of contributors that last beyond Hacktoberfest. Your repository should have a clear path for communication, a good explanation of how to run the project, and clear issues. Our guide will help you to not only prepare your project, but to be added to the list of Virtual Coffee endorsed projects for our Hacktoberfest Initiative.

Contributors

The first step in becoming a good contributor is navigating an open source repository and understanding the time and effort maintainers put into ensuring their projects are welcoming to contributors. As we move into Hacktoberfest season, we can support maintainers in their efforts to onboard new contributors. To complete this monthly challenge, find an open source repository you'd like to contribute to and evaluate it based on our repository checklist. If it doesn't meet our checklist requirements, add an issue or multiple issues asking the maintainers to update the repository based on your feedback.

How to Participate

Take a look at our Repository Checklist. This guide contains all of the things we look for in a good open-source project.

Weekly check-ins

Are you making progress? Every Monday of the month, set your goals for the week and let's check-in on Fridays in slack.

Example Goals for Week One

  1. Maintainers - Review your README and CONTRIBUTING.md files.
  2. Contributors - Look through your favorite repos to see if there's an issue you could create.

How do I share my progress?

Share your progress in the #monthly-challenge channel in Slack. While no other platform is imposed, it can be a good idea to also share on social media for more reach but only if you are comfortable to do so (Twitter using -or not- the hashtag #VCMonthlyChallenge, a personal blog, a post on DEV.to, you get the idea).

Sharing every time some work is added is a good idea, small progress is still progress. No need to write a detailed blog post: a 140 characters Tweet can be enough. For example: Today I updated my README to give instructions on how to run my project.

What if I need help?

You can ask a question in the #help-and-pairing VC channel, ask for ideas in the #open-source channel, or join the VC co-working room. Asking for help is part of the process!

And remember, we're always here to help ❤️

Completing the challenge!

To complete this challenge, you need to post to our Hacktoberfest 2022 discussion. There are two ways to complete this challenge:

  1. If the repository hasn't met the checklist requirements, post the repository and a link to the issue/issues you've added to prepare the repository for Hacktoberfest under the heading ## Needs Updated.
  2. If the repository does meet the checklist requirements, post the repository in the discussion Hacktoberfest 2022 - Repositories we ❤️. If you've verified they're participating in Hacktoberfest, add a note to your post and any additional information you feel is helpful for contributors.

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