Work Selection

We understand that when you join OED it can be tricky to figure out what to work on. This can also be the case as you wind down some work and are looking for more. The best way is to reach out to our contact us using the developer topic or your OED mentor (if you have one) so we can be of assistance. We will help you find tasks that help the project and are aligned with your interests.

What you should work on depends on your background and interests, knowledge of the project and our needs so there is no single answer for what is best that suits everyone. One useful place to look is the GitHub issues for OED. There you will find issues in many areas that are labeled in ways that may help you identify which to work on. If you are new to the project and want to start with easier tasks then ones labeled "i-good-first-issue" are good ones to consider. The priority ("low", "medium" and "high") also gives some idea of how important an item is to the project. Others indicate what area of the project an issue relates to. It is a good idea to see if a task is assigned to any developers. If it is, then it may be under active development or that person knows the status. You should reach out to that person or the project for more information before working on that task. For related reasons, you should make sure you are assigned a task you are working on so others are aware you are working on it. The project board (see below) should also be updated as needed. If you cannot do these due to permission issues then contact us using the developer topic to get the changes made. You can also look at OED GitHub milestones to see what items are associated with which release of OED. This is an indication of the time frame that the item needs to be completed. Note that a task that does not show up in the issues, etc. is documenting the code. There are parts that have insufficient comments and it is very valuable to the project to rectify that situation. It is also a way to engage with the code without having to make changes that impact how it runs.

The design documents (and previously the projects boards) have an overview of major initiatives. It lets you know what work is in progress and what we hope to do next. This generally overlaps the issues but gives a broader picture and is more visual.

The OED Discord channel for developers (and previously the discussion board) . Here you can see the status of development and thought that have come up on issues relating to OED. You are encouraged to subscribe to this discussion by clicking the button on the right side of the page with this discussion group.

If you see an item that refers to a developer document and you do not have access then please just request it.