Skip to content

DOC: update new contributor guidance re timelines, AI, reaching out #31163

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
timhoffm merged 1 commit into from
Feb 25, 2026
Merged

DOC: update new contributor guidance re timelines, AI, reaching out #31163

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
1 commit
Select commit
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
21 changes: 16 additions & 5 deletions doc/devel/contribute.rst
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -62,10 +62,12 @@ Ways to contribute

Understanding the entire codebase is a long-term project, and nobody expects
you to do this right away. If you are determined to get started with
Matplotlib and want to learn, going through the basic functionality,
choosing something to focus on (3d, testing, documentation, animations, etc.)
and gaining context on this area by reading the issues and pull requests
touching these subjects is a reasonable approach.
Matplotlib and want to learn, go through the basic functionality and choose
something to focus on related to your interests, for example 3d, testing,
documentation, or animations. Please gain understanding and context of this area
by reading the issues and pull requests touching these subjects and then reach out
to us at the :ref:`new contributor <new_contributors>` meeting or discourse
channel (incubator) to discuss what you would like to work on.

.. _contribute_code:

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -196,6 +198,10 @@ We expect authentic engagement in our community.
- If you use generative AI tools as an aid in developing code or documentation
changes, ensure that you fully understand the proposed changes and can
explain why they are the correct approach.
- If you use AI for translation or grammar correction, please keep the wording as close
as possible to the original wording. It is much easier to come to a mutual
understanding when we are working off a direct translation of your words/thoughts
rather than a text an LLM may have embellished with possibly spurious information.

Make sure you have added value based on your personal competency to your
contributions. Just taking some input, feeding it to an AI and posting the
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -292,7 +298,12 @@ guide you through each step:
& `"Good first Issue" <https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/labels/good%20first%20issue>`_ (optional).
3. Click on an issue you would like to work on, and check to see if the issue has a pull request opened to resolve it.

* A good way to judge if you chose a suitable issue is by asking yourself, "Can I independently submit a PR in 1-2 weeks?"
* A good way to judge if you chose a suitable issue is by asking yourself, "Can I
independently submit a PR in a reasonable time frame?" This should (at most)
be a few days for an easy issue. If it takes longer, let us know why.
* If you are new to open source, we strongly recommend that you do not choose a
complicated issue for your first contribution - please ask in the incubator
channel if you need help gauging the complexity of the work.
Comment on lines +305 to +306
Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

@timhoffm timhoffm Feb 20, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Suggested change
complicated issue for your first contribution - please ask in the incubator
channel if you need help gauging the complexity of the work.
complicated issue for your first contribution - please ask in the *new
contributor channel* if you need help gauging the complexity of the work.

That's what it's called above.

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member Author

@story645 story645 Feb 20, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

it's called incubator on gitter/discourse, so Ill streamline to that

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

@timhoffm timhoffm Feb 21, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Semi OT: Is incubator a good name? It’s rather an advanced word that people with little English knowledge may not know. Also I’m not clear how welcoming it sounds.

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member Author

@story645 story645 Feb 23, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

I dunno, it's what we decided on back when @melissawm was contributor experience lead the first time. We can discuss again, but I think is out of scope here.

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

@melissawm melissawm Feb 25, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Re: name, I don't have strong opinions! We could try "New contributor space" or something if it makes it clearer.

As far as instructions go, I'm not sure it's clear to new contributors that the incubator is a chat on the discourse interface (I didn't know discourse had a chat feature until a month ago!)

This should probably be mentioned here: https://matplotlib.org/devdocs/devel/contribute.html#contributor-incubator but I think can be a follow-up.

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member Author

@story645 story645 Feb 25, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Yeah, I think name change is maybe a separate discussion and we should probably discuss on the call if it's time to move the chat links to discourse (I think we've adopted it at this point)

4. Check existing pull requests (e.g., :ghpull:`28476`) and filter by the issue number to make sure the issue is not in progress:

* If the issue has a pull request (is in progress), tag the user working on the issue, and ask to collaborate (optional).
Expand Down