Repository: scrapy/scrapy
Pull request: #5109 extend contributing.rst
Closes #5109. May need some formatting on links or rewrite.

Problem statement:
Starting contributing 
Hello everybody. I am a Brazilian student at UTFPR. I would like to contribute with Scrapy and I would like to ask someone to refer me to an issue to start, most of the issues I saw are already in progress or have been finalized. Thanks

Hints from issue discussion:
This is a common problem in Scrapy. Whenever we tag an issue as a “good first issue”, someone new often starts working on it no longer after.

Some of those listed in https://github.com/scrapy/scrapy/contribute do not have pull requests targeting them, but they are all about improving the documentation.

Anything that is not tagged as a “good first issue” is potentially too hard for someone unfamiliar with the Scrapy code base. So I’m hesitant to suggest issues that are not tagged as so. You could review other issues yourself, see if anything catches your eye. Or you could look into issues that affect yourself. You can also look into improving the documentation or improving [test coverage](https://app.codecov.io/gh/scrapy/scrapy); for some people these are not as gratifying as implementing features or fixing tests, but they are also a good way of forcing yourself to deep into the code base, which could put you in a better place to handle harder issues.

I’ll keep this issue open because I think it may be a good idea to extend https://docs.scrapy.org/en/master/contributing.html to cover this topic, of suggestions for people that want to start contributing but do not know what work to do.
All right. Thank you for your attention, @Gallaecio . I'm going to take a look at this part of the documentation and testing. As I use Scrapy, I will see if there are any bugs to report or any ideas for new features. If you need help with ideas for new contributors you can call me.
I am extending the docs atm. Soon will mention this in a PR for it.

Commit message: #5109 extend contributing.rst

Patch to review:
diff --git a/docs/contributing.rst b/docs/contributing.rst
index 6b1a4133984..cbfcc375194 100644
--- a/docs/contributing.rst
+++ b/docs/contributing.rst
@@ -11,6 +11,19 @@ Contributing to Scrapy
 
 There are many ways to contribute to Scrapy. Here are some of them:
 
+* Contribute to Scrapy by fixing currently available issues in the repository.
+  Scrapy has a list of `good first issues`_ and `help wanted issues`_ that you
+  can work on. These issues are a great way to get started with contributing to
+  Scrapy. If you're new to the codebase, you may want to focus on documentation
+  or testing-related issues, as they are always useful and can help you get
+  more familiar with the project. You can also check Scrapy's `test coverage`_
+  to see which areas may benefit from more tests.
+
+* Participate in the `Google Summer of Code (GSoC)`_ program. Scrapy is a
+  mentoring organization for GSoC, and we welcome students who are interested
+  in contributing to Scrapy. Visit the `GSoC website`_ for more information on
+  how to participate.
+
 * Blog about Scrapy. Tell the world how you're using Scrapy. This will help
   newcomers with more examples and will help the Scrapy project to increase its
   visibility.
@@ -314,3 +327,8 @@ And their unit-tests are in::
 .. _PEP 257: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/
 .. _pull request: https://help.github.com/en/github/collaborating-with-issues-and-pull-requests/creating-a-pull-request
 .. _pytest-xdist: https://github.com/pytest-dev/pytest-xdist
+.. _good first issues: https://github.com/scrapy/scrapy/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22good+first+issue%22
+.. _help wanted issues: https://github.com/scrapy/scrapy/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22help+wanted%22
+.. _Google Summer of Code (GSoC): https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/
+.. _GSoC website: https://gsoc2022.zyte.com/participate
+.. _test coverage: https://app.codecov.io/gh/scrapy/scrapy
\ No newline at end of file


Code review comments:
diff_hunk: @@ -11,6 +11,19 @@ Contributing to Scrapy
 
 There are many ways to contribute to Scrapy. Here are some of them:
 
+* Contribute to Scrapy by fixing currently available issues in the repository.
+  Scrapy has a list of `good first issues`_ and `help wanted issues`_ that you
+  can work on. These issues are a great way to get started with contributing to
+  Scrapy. If you're new to the codebase, you may want to focus on documentation
+  or testing-related issues, as they are always useful and can help you get
+  more familiar with the project. You can also check Scrapy's `test coverage`_
+  to see which areas may benefit from more tests.
+
+* Participate in the `Google Summer of Code (GSoC)`_ program. Scrapy is a
+  mentoring organization for GSoC, and we welcome students who are interested
+  in contributing to Scrapy. Visit the `GSoC website`_ for more information on
+  how to participate.
path: docs/contributing.rst
text: @user1:
I would say we are *usually* a mentoring organization (e.g. we are not in 2023, sadly).

And I would avoid linking to a specific GSoC webpage as the “current“ one, or we will need to update this page every year. You could mention the URL pattern (`gsocYEAR.zyte.com`), and give the 2022 URL as an example.

Also, it may be best to follow the same pattern as with other bullet points: here only mention briefly the possibility, and elaborate on a separate section down below about the specifics.

@author:
I removed altogether this section. For our purposes it may just convolute the doc.