Awesome

imposter syndrome disclaimer

A warm invitation to contribute, to be adapted and included in your project's README

How to contribute

Imposter syndrome disclaimer: I want your help. No really, I do.

There might be a little voice inside that tells you you're not ready; that you need to do one more tutorial, or learn another framework, or write a few more blog posts before you can help me with this project.

I assure you, that's not the case.

This project has some clear Contribution Guidelines and expectations that you can read here (link).

The contribution guidelines outline the process that you'll need to follow to get a patch merged. By making expectations and process explicit, I hope it will make it easier for you to contribute.

And you don't just have to write code. You can help out by writing documentation, tests, or even by giving feedback about this work. (And yes, that includes giving feedback about the contribution guidelines.)

Thank you for contributing!

About this work

I came up with the idea of an imposter syndrome disclaimer for project READMEs while working on my 2016 talks for OSCON and PyCon. A goal was to share how leaders, mentors, and maintainers could become more accessible, welcoming collaborators with junior developers. Being explicitly welcoming and providing clear contribution guidelines is a powerful way to encourage others to contribute to your work.

Examples

I'm thrilled that projects have adopted this language! Here are a few examples.

Licensing

MIT. Take, adapt, use. Link back to this repo. And if you want to give me a shout-out on Twitter that feels awesome.