The number of commits to a repository is a sign of how active a project is. Some projects have dozens of commits per day, while others may only have a commit or two a month. A large number of commits is not inherently good or bad. It depends on whether you're more comfortable with a big, busy project or something smaller and easier to get a handle on.

Projects with no commits in a month or more may be dormant or even abandoned. You should always talk to the community before trying to contribute, but this is especially true for inactive projects.

Keep in mind that not all contributions and activity show up in the git commit history. Publicity, user support, communtiy management and outreach, and other kinds of contribution will not be visible here.

Some projects have lots of contributors, while others are worked on by a small number of people. Many open source projects are the work of a single person! A project with many contributors is a good choice for a newcomer - after all, the more members of the community there are, the more likely someone will be able to help you get started.

Because Github only records contributions from the commit history, this statistic may not reflect the number of people available to help you. Why not check out the community's mailing list or IRC channel too?

Issues are a way for users and contributors to report bugs and request new features. While a community may not be able to fix every bug, or support every requested feature, it's a good sign when every issue gets a response. It means the maintainers have the energy and inclination to engage with their community.

(Note: this statistic does not distinguish between responses from maintainers and additional comments from the original poster or from similarly interested users. But it's a decent estimate.)

Pull requests are how people send their contributions to a project. When a pull request is "merged", that means the maintainers have accepted those contributions. A high percentage of merged pull requests is a great sign that a project is good for newcomers.

In some projects, all contributors including maintainers submit changes via pull requests. Those projects will have a much higher percentage for this statistic. To get more detail, go to the project's pull request page and read the individual requests. The best sign are pull requests with comments from the maintainer helping the contributor make fixes so their contribution can be merged.

Documentation is an important part of any project. Good documentation is a great resource for a new contributor, as well as a sign that a given project has put thought and energy into making their project accessible.

This checklist item looks for a "readme" file in the top level of the repository. Readme's are a common way to share important information with newcomers. You should also look for a "Contributing" file with details on how to contribute and a "docs" repository for detailed documentation.

Some projects highlight issues that are likely to be good for newcomers by labelling them in their issue tracker. These are good options for a first contribution, as well as a sign that the community cares about welcoming newcomers.

This item checks for commonly used labels, but we can't check all of them. Take a look through the project's labels yourself and see if there's anything that looks geared to newcomers.

A note of warning: many tasks with these labels are not as easy as they appear to be, and often do not contain enough information for real newcomers to tackle them. Please don't feel bad if you're struggling with one. You can always ask for help!