Progress

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It has now been six or so weeks since starting my journey. Over these past few weeks I have learned more about open source software development than I had previously thought attainable in such a small time period. After learning more about git, licenses, conduct, and the community I believe I will soon be able to make actual contributions to code. For now, I am proud of the small contributions I have been able to make.

OpenStreetMap

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So far, I have focused on making small contributions to OpenStreetMap. Like most people I chose to start with the familiar. I scanned OpenStreetMap points and building in my neighborhood and from there I went about updating businesses and addresses that I, and therefore others, patronize often. For example, I noticed that OpenStreetMap was missing a prominent cleaners that had been in business over 10 years. I made sure to also delete any points I knew to be no longer existent. I also added 3 cafes that I knew to be notable locally. These cafes are not just coffee shops they are community staples which is why I was surprised to learn that they were missing.¹

The Coppola Cafe

OpenStreetMap Entry

Wikipedia

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My next few small contributions were made to Wikipedia. Again, I wanted to make contributions that heavily reflected my own interests. Over the last few years I have occasionally taken Italian culture classes at New York University Casa Italiana building, a beautiful brownstone located on West 12th Street and 5th Avenue. While roaming on OpenStreetMap I noticed that the Casa Italiana Building was missing I added it to OpenStreetMap and then discovered the reason it wasn’t originally listed as such is because it is considered a historical building and also known as the “General Scott Winfield House”. While looking at the Wikipedia page for Casa Italiana, I noticed that the rich history of the building was missing and so I added a bit more context.²

Casa Italiana

Because it is Oscars season, my next 2 contributions focused on movies that I really appreciated this year, “The Monkey” (2025) and “The Substance” (2025). I went about updating the cast list of both of these movies to credit the amazing actors and actresses who worked in these films. I double checked with IMDB and added anyone notable who I felt had been mistakenly left out. These two contributions are the ones that were the most challenging. These pages get a lot of attention so it seemed as soon as I could make an edit, another user would slightly change it. While I appreciate this due diligence, the changes didn’t always seem relevant. Another issue I faced was with the “The Substance” (2025) page as it had a lock on editing due to heavy traffic. I had to make a detailed edit request, and after the request was made and approved a moderator made the edit for me. Nevertheless, I think that I enjoyed these contributions the most, even though they were small it was exciting to be apart of such an active and invested community.

Github

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Throughout the last couple days, as I begin to search for projects to contribute to I have been holding myself accountable on reading through code repositories more thoroughly. One of those being that of Mermaid a JavaScript based diagramming and charting tool. While reading through this repo I noticed an issue regarding a broken link for their contributing file making it hard for users to find instructions for contributing. I reported this issue, and luckily the community is active enough that soon my issue was fixed. I enjoyed this process because the most challenging part was knowing the process of reporting on an issue, because I was not aware that after the issue is “fixed”, the administrator would still reach out to the reporter to review on the issue. I mistakenly closed the issue after commenting and then was told its practice to wait until the pull request is officially merged. I haven’t had to work with people I am not familiar with in this manner so it was very educational on what is considered good practice when it comes to git and contributing.

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