Contributing to Open Source (as a Turing student)

OmniAuth Identity
Awesome gem! But is starting to become outdated. 
Some simple changes that would make it more user friendly
have not been applied despite being talked about in a 
rails cast over a year ago.

So I decided to try to do something about it

1. Breakdown each element you want to change

2. Look at their repo pull requests to see if 
your change already has a PR to fix the issue
a. one of my topics was already repaired in the time
between conception and writing my code updates

3. Study their code
a. start with their tests
b. learn their patterns

4. WRITE TESTS!

5. write code to make your tests pass

6. Keep each part you are adding as a separate PR
a. makes it modular so they can accept or reject individual parts
instead of rejecting your only pull request because one part of
it isn't acceptable to them. 

7. Submit those PRs!
a. be verbose in describing your reasons for the PR

8. Follow up. 

9. Despite all your hard work, be prepared to be ignored!