Find issues to work on¶

We use GitHub issues to track documentation tasks. Start by checking out the issues list to see if there are any tasks you’d like to work on. We use labels to help filter the tasks that need to be done and to show whether they’re assigned to someone or not.

Get an issue assigned¶

When you find a task you want to work on, leave a comment on the issue saying you’d like to be assigned the task, with an estimated date for when you hope to complete it. One of the documentation maintainers will respond and assign that task to you.

Note

There is no time limit for completing a task, but if you need more time, need help, or won’t be able to complete the issue after all, make sure to comment on the issue to let us know. It’s quite normal for plans to change, and handing an issue back won’t prevent you from picking up more issues in the future!

Issues that have no work being done on them, with no updates from the author, will be considered stale after one month and will be unassigned to allow others a chance to pick them up.

Each issue can be worked on by a single person, and each person can work on one issue at a time. You can see which issues are unassigned by selecting “Assigned to nobody” from the “Assignee” drop-down menu (or use this link as a shortcut).

Issue labels¶

The Ubuntu Server team regularly triages issues, and we use the following issue labels to help manage them. If you are looking for certain types of tasks, you can filter the issues list by label. The labels are grouped together into the following categories.

Note that we don’t use the help wanted or good first issue labels. All the issues we have can be considered as available for anyone who wants to work on them.

Coding level¶

These labels correspond to the different types of contributions that we accept according to the details in the Types of contributions page.

code: coding
code: low-code
code: non-code
code: technical

Content¶

These labels are used to mark out issues related to content. They will often also have a Diátaxis label to give more context.

content: edit/update

Edit or update existing content for consistency, accuracy, style, completeness, etc.
content: new

Add new documentation for a specific tool, feature, or function.

For¶

For: Open Documentation Academy

This issue has enough context/detail to be picked up by members of the Canonical Open Documentation Academy.
For: Server ToDo

This issue has been identified as something the Ubuntu Server team needs to work on or fix.

Review¶

This issue or Pull Request needs a specific type of review.

review: wording

Review the quality, clarity, and consistency of the wording.
review: technical

Review the technical accuracy, completeness, and up-to-dateness of the content.

State labels¶

The set of State: issues labels are for the maintainers of the repository to flag possible problems with the listed issue or Pull Request.

State: duplicate

Used when an issue is closed.
State: Incomplete

Used when there isn’t enough information in an issue to resolve the problem.
State: Invalid

Used when an issue is closed.
State: WIP

Used for Pull Requests that have been submitted but are not yet ready for review.

After you find an issue¶

After you have found an issue you want to work on, and have been assigned the issue, you will want to either use the GitHub web interface to create a quick pull request, or fetch the documentation to your own machine so you can build the documentation locally and work on your own local copy.