Open Source Vocabulary: "Creating an Issue"

Week 3 went by like the wind. As expected, it has been a busy one, filled with new tasks and learning opportunities. To give a quick rundown, I’ve transitioned from solely reviewing research papers to curating them again, this time in preparation for my upcoming presentation with the BugSigDB team next week.

In my last blog post, I shared my core values and explained why they are important to me. This week, I want to share an open-source vocabulary term I encountered while contributing to open-source projects. It's a term I didn’t know could mean something positive, and I was a little amused by it. The term is “Creating an Issue.”

The first time I heard the phrase, I was genuinely puzzled. A small voice in my head said, “Why are we creating problems for ourselves?” It sounded counterintuitive.

Why do we create issues?

As it turns out, in the world of open source, “creating an issue” is a standard and essential practice. It simply refers to opening a report in a project’s issue tracker (such as GitHub) to highlight something that needs attention, it can be a bug, a feature suggestion, a request for clarification, or, in my case, a new research study that hasn’t yet been curated in the BugSigDB database. You can find some examples here.

This term and the process behind it gave me a clearer perspective on how structured and community-driven open-source development really is. Issues are not “problems” in the negative sense; they’re conversations waiting to happen. Each new issue represents a chance to improve the project, support the users, and work collaboratively toward a better outcome with the team.

If you're new to open source or just starting to use GitHub for collaborative work, please get comfortable. This is a good start. You'll soon find yourself either creating issues to flag important contributions or helping to resolve them. Both are equally valuable, and both help move the project forward.

Wrapping up

To wrap up, this week has been productive. I am grateful to my mentors and the BugSigDB community for all their guidance and support so far. I am also constantly reminded that growth often comes in small, surprising moments, like realizing the power of a single word in a new context. I'm excited to continue contributing, learning, and yes, creating more issues along the way.