Before you send a pull request to a project you don't know, ask one question first: will anyone answer it?

I followed 1.4 million pull requests to 11,000 GitHub projects to see how much the answer varies. A lot.

At some projects, half the outside pull requests get a human reply within about 30 minutes. At more than 1 in 8 of the projects I could judge, most outsiders hear nothing for two weeks.

The check

On the project's GitHub page, open Pull requests and search for is:pr is:closed .

Open five recent ones whose authors are not labelled Member, Owner or Collaborator. Those labels mark insiders.

For each, note how long the first comment or review from a human took. Skip bots.

If most of the five heard back within a day or two, that's a good sign. If they waited weeks, yours may too.

What normal looks like

At 2,300 projects there were enough replies to time.…