// the find
shanselman/firsttimersonly
The Repository for the FirstTimersOnly movement in Open Source. We want projects to reserve some issues for newbies.
A static GitHub Pages site (Jekyll, plain CSS/HTML) for the FirstTimersOnly movement, which pushes the idea that OSS maintainers should set aside beginner-friendly issues for new contributors. It's a manifesto plus a short resource list, not a tool or app — useful for a maintainer deciding whether to adopt the practice, less so for anyone looking for working code.
The idea it promotes actually won — 'good first issue' labels and GitHub's own first-issue tooling are now standard practice, so this repo is an early artifact of something that shaped how OSS onboarding works today. The site is trivially forkable as a template if you want to build your own project landing page. Includes a CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md, which a lot of similar advocacy repos skip.
There's no actual functionality here — no scripts, no GitHub Action, nothing that finds or labels first-timer-friendly issues automatically; it's just a pitch page. The directory is full of dead Jekyll scaffolding (vendored webfonts, sprite PNGs, a Gemfile) that has nothing to do with the stated mission and just adds maintenance surface. README.md is three short paragraphs of advocacy copy with no setup instructions, contribution guide, or examples of what a 'first timer' issue should actually look like. The 733 stars vs. 443 forks ratio suggests most forks are just people copying the page template, not engaging with the movement's substance.