Which I had offered as a solution in the thread, but was ultimately shot down with "It's 2016, we have bots that can do that."
Clearly the bots don't work if it's still a problem.
Number that attempt to get involved is unknown.
I require 1st semester students to push final projects to Github public repositories so they learn Git.
Biggest problem is that they can't program very well yet but want to contribute. So any low-hanging fruit is welcome, really.
There have been days where I've actively searched for some OSS project that is accessible enough for me to work on - because usually the ideas I have myself are things I'm not capable of! Or I just need to think more about how to get started, and when in this mood I'd rather just get hacking on someone else's project's issue.
My point is, issue triaging could be a great way to learn the ropes of a project (and get to know the team a bit), and you'd probably find yourself occasionally (then gradually more often) thinking "hey, actually I reckon I can have a crack at this myself". That'd be really satisfying for a never-contributed-before fresher.
1st level triage for issues could be done by developer in the Phillipines on Upwork for like $5-10/hr.
The problem really is they've hit a scale where they need a human CSR to handle their 1st level triage but they don't have the cash to pay one.
Volunteers find the work mind numbing enough they refuse to do it for long generally.
All the people making money on books about ES6 could kick in. All the folks making screencasts could kick in.
All the companies making money on open-source could kick in.
And volunteers? They should cycle out and move up into more interesting work, making room for new people to do that. That's what I was thinking.
Not that I'm saying that volunteers are better -- they asked, no one stepped up, which means to me that volunteers are a non-starter.