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Creating an issue

If you can’t find relevant issues to work on in the OpenRefine Design Project, or you already have new ideas for OpenRefine that you’d like to contribute to, you are welcome to create new issues. To do that you can either click on "New issue" from the Issues page of the relevant repository, or you can click on the “Add new item” buttons from the bottom of the Table or Board views in the OpenRefine Design Project page. You may be prompted to select a template if applicable.

Specify the type of issue: Choose one of the following options that best describes your issue:

  • Bug report: Create a report to help us improve OpenRefine.
  • Feature request: Suggest an idea for OpenRefine.
  • Design discussion: Start a discussion on issues related to UI/visual design, UX/usability or accessibility.
  • Documentation: Report issues related to improving project documentation or tutorials.
  • Report a security vulnerability: Privately report a security vulnerability.
  • Ask a question (forum): Please ask and answer questions here.
  • Gitter chat: Engage in live discussions on Gitter.

Selecting the appropriate issue type ensures that your contribution reaches the right audience and receives the attention it needs.

Title and description: Craft a clear and descriptive title (e.g., "Improve Consistency in Button Styling" rather than just “Button Design”) for your issue. Detail the design problem or idea following the template provided in the description space. Screenshots or links to mockups can add clarity.

Assigning labels:Labels are used to categorize issues based on their content. It's important to note that label assignment is generally restricted to more experienced contributors, and you need to wait to become a member of the OpenRefine GitHub organization before being able to perform this yourself. In any case, it’s helpful to be aware of the current labeling conventions in order to be able to better identify issues suitable to contribute to, as well as being able to assign labels yourself in the future.

Label structure: Generally, issues can be tagged with labels that fall within one of the following categories: Type / Theme / Status / PR [pull request] / Priority / Difficulty / Platform / Module / Data format

You would have already seen the templates for the Type category labels, these were Bug, Feature Request, Design Discussion, and Documentation. The next set of labels relevant for design contributions are the Theme category labels, these can be one of the following: UI/Visual Design, UX/Usability and Accessibility. Status is assigned via the Project views. PR, Priority, and the rest of the categories are optional, but still helpful to assign whenever possible. Difficulty is a category that can be particularly useful when identifying issues to contribute to. The Good first issue label indicates an issue that is suitable to newcomers, whereas Difficulty: Intermediate or Advanced indicate issues better suited to more experienced contributors. Check out the Resources section for a complete guide to the GitHub label structure used by the OpenRefine community.

Submitting your issue: Click "Submit new issue" to publish your issue. It will now be visible to the OpenRefine community.