glossary

Glossary

The terms used across this portfolio and how it's worked out from the underlying GitHub activity.

Portfolio-wide Metrics

Terms for the numbers that sum up all the open source work shown here, from the very first contribution to now.

Total Impact

Every contribution counted together, going back to the very first one on GitHub.

How it’s worked out
Adds up merged pull requests, issues, reviewed pull requests, co-authored pull requests, and collaborations.

Shipped Changes

How many of those contributions were actually finished and accepted — not just opened.

How it’s worked out
Counts only the contributions GitHub marked as merged. Total Impact also includes work that's still open, so this number is smaller — it's what's actually done.

Active Since

The year of the very first recorded contribution on GitHub.

How it’s worked out
Finds the earliest contribution in the data and uses its year as the starting point.

Impacted Repos

How many different projects are represented here, and how many organizations those projects belong to.

How it’s worked out
Counts every different external repo with at least one recorded contribution. A project's organization is whoever owns the repo — the "octocat" in octocat/Hello-World, for example.

Helped Ship

How many reviewed or co-authored pull requests actually got merged — work that helped someone else's contribution land, not solo PRs.

How it’s worked out
Counts every reviewed or co-authored pull request that got merged, across the full contribution history. One that's still open, or was closed without merging, doesn't count yet.

Primary Focus Projects

The three projects with the most contributions, over the full history.

How it’s worked out
Sorts every tracked repo by how many contributions it has, and picks the top three.

Collaboration Profile

A label for the primary way of contributing to the community.

How it’s worked out
Looks at contribution frequency across every category, then picks the label that fits best — for example, "Community Mentor" for a high volume of reviews.

Journey

Terms used on the Journey page — selected work, talks, expertise, and the roles behind them.

Selected Work, Awards & Talks

A showcase of notable work and recognition within the open source community, on one continuous timeline.

How it’s added
Each one is added manually. What can be found here: awards, courses and certifications, projects, documentation work, talks, and videos — each one tagged for quick identification.

Expertise, Tools & Skills

The skill areas behind the work, plus the tools and languages used to do it. No self-rated skill bars — the rest of the portfolio is the proof.

How it’s added
Expertise areas are entered manually in a contents file, each with a title and a short blurb. Tools and skills each show as their own list, but only if there's something in it — an empty list just doesn't show, heading and all. A few entries can be marked to stand out (bold, in the accent color) to call out the two or three that matter most.

Experience & Roles

A record of official roles held within open source organizations.

How it’s added
Each role is added by hand in a contents file, along with its dates. Whether it shows as Active or Past is worked out automatically from those dates.

Active Workbench

Terms used on the Active Workbench page — the live board of maintainer and contribution work in progress.

Board & Lanes

A live board of work in progress, organized by what happens next.

How it’s added
Open pull requests, assigned issues, and review requests are pulled together with live status updates into one board, then sorted into five lanes, ordered by what happens next:
  • Needs your action: Feedback to address, a review still pending, or a note left after approval.
  • Approved — bring it home: Reviewed and approved, but not shipped yet — something still needs to happen first, like a final check or a reminder to a maintainer.
  • Waiting on others: That side of the work is done — awaiting review, or blocked on a linked code PR.
  • Stalled · 30+ days: No movement in a month — each needs a decision: nudge or close.
  • Automated: Automatic updates from bots, like routine dependency or security updates — grouped together and kept out of the way.
Only open items are shown; they're removed once they're merged or closed. An empty board reads "Your court is clear" — a good sign, not an error.

A freshness badge in the header reads "Updated Xh ago" (or "Updated just now" / "Updated yesterday") when the board's data loaded live, and "cached · Nd old" when that data isn't available right now and the board is showing the last good saved copy — a banner explains why whenever that happens.

Workbench Status & Ball Tracking

A badge on each row showing whose turn it is, whether it's a draft, and how long it's been waiting.

How it’s added
Each task carries a "ball" badge showing whose move it is:
  • Take Action: New feedback to address, a requested review, or a reply that needs an answer.
  • To Write: An issue that's assigned, with no pull request opened yet.
  • Approved: The PR has a formal approval and is heading toward merge. An approval dismissed after a later push still counts — its note names the approver and adds "dismissed after update", asking for a fresh look rather than a from-scratch re-review.
  • Watching: The ball is with another maintainer or contributor; participation continues in the background.
  • Waiting: That side of the work is done, and the row is idle by design — a draft not yet marked ready, or work blocked on someone else.
  • Stale: No real activity for 30+ days on a row where the next move belongs to someone else.
  • Bot: An automatic update to a dependency or security patch, submitted by a bot, kept in its own lane.
A Draft chip marks a pull request still in draft state. The day count shown next to a Stalled (or otherwise long-idle) badge is the time since the last real update.

Note on Timers: "Idle" ignores noise such as labels, reviewer pings, or base-branch merges. The clock only resets on a new commit, a code review (human or bot), or a discussion comment.

Writing

Terms used on the Writing page, covering recognitions and published articles and how they are grouped.

Recognitions

External recognition for individual pieces of writing — top-of-the-week picks, challenge wins, and similar mentions. Shown at the top of the page, above the article lists, and only when at least one exists.

How it’s added
Each one is added manually in a contents file, with a title, the platform that gave it, and a link. A standout entry can be marked with a star.

Articles Written

Blog posts and articles about open source, written to support and promote the community. Grouped into Written for organizations, for pieces written for a specific org, and Personal writing, for everything else.

How it’s added
Articles are pulled in automatically from Dev.to, plus added directly for other platforms (like freeCodeCamp) in the contents folder. Pieces written for a specific organization are grouped under Written for organizations, newest organization first; everything else is listed under Personal writing, newest first.

Quarterly Reports

How contributions are grouped into three-month periods, making them easier to find and read.

Reports Index

The main list of the portfolio. It organizes all work into separate pages grouped by year and three-month periods (quarters).

Where it comes from
The Quarterly Reports page works like a folder, showing every year and, inside each year, its three-month periods.

Quarterly Report Metrics

Terms used inside a single report, covering the work done in that three-month period.

Quarter in brief

A plain-language summary at the top of each quarterly report: a sentence or two on what happened, which organizations were worked with, and a few highlighted contributions.

How it’s worked out
Built from the same counts as the tables below — merged, reviewed, and co-authored pull requests, and issues — turned into a few sentences, a list of organizations worked with, and up to three highlighted contributions. The Markdown version of the report shows the same numbers as a Quarterly Statistics table instead, since Markdown can't do the same layout.

Quarterly Statistics

A summary that shows the total work and the projects involved during a specific three-month period.

How it’s worked out
Adds up every type of contribution and every different repo touched during that three-month period.

Top 3 Repositories

The projects that received the most work and attention within each quarter.

How it’s worked out
Sorts repos by how many contributions happened in them that quarter.

Merged PRs

A record of pull requests that got accepted and merged into other people's repos.

How it’s worked out
Finds every pull request marked as merged, and works out the Review Period — the time from opening it to it being accepted.

Issues

A record of bugs, ideas, and problems reported on other people's repos.

How it’s worked out
Collects every issue opened, whether or not it was assigned. Works out the Closing Period — the time from opening to closing.

Reviewed PRs

A record of formal reviews left on other people's pull requests.

How it’s worked out
Works out the Review Period — from the pull request opening to the formal review being submitted — and tracks its current Status and Last Update.

Co-authored PRs

A record of pull requests where code was contributed alongside other developers.

How it’s worked out
Finds commits credited to a co-author. The Commit Period is the time from the pull request opening to the first commit on it — showing when the collaboration started. Status and Last Update track where it stands now.

Collaborations

A record of comments left on issues or pull requests opened by other people.

How it’s worked out
Tracks comments on pull requests and issues, up until one gets a formal review.