🙏 How can we make GitHub easier to learn, use, or view?

[JFWooten4]

Would love to hear from some of the users who expressed confusion in navigation

Originally commented by @tehchives in WhyDRS/.github#19 (comment)

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As we work on a general Ape's Introductory Guide,¹ it'd be super helpful to hear how we can make this platform easier for everyone to leverage. For context, there is an introductory post with an initial section walking through GH account creation. If that doesn't work,² please feel free to ping me in the Discord!

Even if you've had smooth sailing in the org, we'd love to hear about your experience—what worked well for you and what stood out as positive. If something felt especially intuitive, let us know so we can build on those strengths. Your feedback will directly shape how we structure resources and onboard new members in the future—thank you for helping us improve!

Footnotes

1. And some aspects of the DUNA docs ↩

2. Or you get a weird spam slap like Altair—whoops! Thanks for the update from James affirming their return. 🍌 ↩

[JamesAlfonse]

I think this is an important discussion, tagging some people that have commented or created an issue recently for visibility.

@LastResortFriend @bobmahalo @greengiantyo @jergy2 @AltairAster @jackofspades71

[LastResortFriend]

So as far as getting people up to speed on Github we need our education material to meet a few criteria:

It must be text and picture based. While videos are nice they do present a small mental barrier for people just wanting to "do it" right away, which is an energy that can't be wasted.

Instructions must be clear, concise, highly purposed, and paired with pictures at appropriate intervals. Instructions should also only apply to basic features required for function, stuff like how to bold sentences can be found by the user - it's our job to make sure they can meet minimum communication and functional standards for basic participation.

Finally they must be displayed where users will find them the most useful, if we want a bunch of users from the Discord for example there should be a dedicated channel their for Github tutorials, progressing from basic to advanced.

If we keep these things in mind I believe we'll find great success.

[LastResortFriend]

Although perhaps videos will still be helpful for other users, everyone learns differently.

[AltairAster]

Here are some links we can add for navigating forking, pulling:
Forking
Github tutorial
Pull Request
Adding simple explanations for navigating such as discussions, projects, repos would be helpful for example:
Repository - A repository in GitHub is a folder that stores files, code, and their revision history for a project. Repositories are the basic unit of GitHub and are used to store, share, and collaborate on projects.
Projects - Projects is a way to organize Issues
Issues - You can create issues in your repository to plan, discuss, and track work. Issues are quick to create, flexible, and can be used in many ways. Issues can track bug reports, new features and ideas, and anything else you need to write down or discuss with your team.
Discussions - Acts like threads in discord. It also gives you an asynchronous communication platform that allows for open-ended conversations, making it easier to save historical information, frequently asked questions, and feature ideas.

[tehchives]

Great thoughts and resources there @AltairAster ! We can add these items into the main readme.md on the homepage, along with updating to include the other new repos, and we can update some channels over on this discord (main engagement space) as we incorporate the other large changes from @LastResortFriend .

On that front, what if we had something like

#github-help
#github-logs
#github-discussion

Too much?

[JFWooten4]

Fan! 💜💜

I also appreciate how you move old items to # Archive so that new apes can still search for past info.

[JamesAlfonse]

https://github.blog/open-source/new-to-open-source-heres-everything-you-need-to-get-started/?

Here's a link that may be useful. Especially the section below:

Find your place: contributions go beyond code

When you’re looking for that first contribution, don’t get too hung up on the idea that you need to contribute code. Non-code contributions are critical to a project’s success and a fantastic way to get involved. Not to mention, some maintainers don’t even want code contributions!

Here are some of the most impactful ways you can contribute, without writing code:

📚 Documentation: According to the 2021 Octoverse report, good documentation can boost productivity by 50%. Clarify confusing text, help write docs for new features, and share your knowledge.
🎨 Design: A strong visual identity signals a project’s health and professionalism. But not everyone has the design skills to create visuals, logos, or improve the user experience.
🐞 Bug reports and testing: Bug reports and tests are invaluable to maintainers… though don’t forget to tell them what’s working great, too!
🌟 Community engagement: Active communities foster collaboration and growth. Pitch in by helping answer questions, onboarding new contributors, or even moderating discussions.
💡 Pro tip: Non-code contributions aren’t necessarily non-technical. Tasks like testing or documentation often require a deep understanding of the codebase.

👉 How non-code contributions are the secret to open source success