[docs]: Add notes for first time contributors

[saehejkang]

Type of Change

• Bug fix
• New feature
• Breaking change
• Documentation update

Motivation and Context

Added new sections to help first time contributors with tips on how to get started with issues, how to ask for help, and who to ask for help.

Closes apple/container#880, as it was preferred to not add a CODEOWNERS file, but instead add notes to where contributors can find a list of maintainers to ping.

Testing

• Tested locally
• Added/updated tests
• Added/updated docs

[katiewasnothere]

Sorry for the delay. I think we've sorted out what we want to do about the list of people you can ping (PRs coming for that).

For more feedback on this PR, with these changes, CONTRIBUTING has both direct policies (like the AI policy, Code of Conduct, etc) AND kind of "soft" policies like "here's when it's reasonable to ping someone to help move along your PR". I was thinking maybe we put the soft policies on how to pick an issue, how to get help, etc in a separate doc and link to it from CONTRIBUTING.

What do you think? Definitely open to more discussion here. The concern I think I have with what this PR is adding right now is that it makes it harder for people who are seasoned contributors to open source to find the hard policies for the repo, which may make them less likely to read the doc at all.

[saehejkang]

I think we've sorted out what we want to do about the list of people you can ping (PRs coming for that).

🚀

What do you think? Definitely open to more discussion here.

My only qualm with this is that there are other policies (submitting issues, pull requests), in the contribution file, that I feel are really helpful. Should those not also be moved then?

is that it makes it harder for people who are seasoned contributors to open source to find the hard policies for the repo, which may make them less likely to read the doc at all

Not sure what you mean by this 🤔. I would think that new/seasoned contributors would route to the contribution guide on first glance and see both the direct/soft policies?

in a separate doc and link to it from CONTRIBUTING

What would you want to name this file, if we went this direction?

[katiewasnothere]

@saehejkang Yeah that's a valid concern. It does feel weird to have two locations for policies. Another option I was thinking about was having the contributing doc structured like this:

• index for different sections
• Separate sections for "New to git?", "New to GitHub?", and "New to apple/container/ization"

Then people can navigate just to the sections that are relevant to them. If they've never used git or made open source contributions, they would read the whole thing. If they're seasoned contributors to other oss projects, they can skip down to "New to apple/container/ization". We'd have the "how to pick an issue", "when/how to get help" and similar subsections under the "New to Github" section imo but we can discuss more.

What do you think?

[saehejkang]

What do you think?

I like the idea of adding an index for different sections. Thoughts on naming the section "New to open source"? I feel all the policies below are fair guidelines that open source contributors should know about before contributing to any repo. If need be, the "who to ask for help" section can be moved under "New to apple/containerization", as that list is specific to the repo.

• how to get started with issues
• how to ask for help
• who to ask for help