Why "good first issues" are usually not good first issues
Contributing to open-source projects is a goal of many programmers. Issues tagged with "good-first-issue" is one way to find something to work on.
When newcomers (people who never contributed to the project) browse issues in a repo, GitHub will hit them with a banner "If you're ready to tackle some open issues, we've collected some good first issues for you.", which will take you to an issues page filtered with the label good-first-issue.
Think of this page as a landing page for your repo to newcomers, since it's pretty much the first thing someone will look for when they're looking to contribute (most repos will also link this page in CONTRIBUTING.md). But I've found this page to be downright unhelpful in most cases. Usually it's filled with issues which fall into one of these buckets:
Stale Issues
The implementation is no longer required, but no-one bothered to update the issue.
Unattended Issues
There is a PR (or multiple) linked to the issue but no one has attended to it.
Ambiguous Context
The issue is written as if the newcomer is supposed to understand a lot of context. Someone has asked a clarifying question, no one has answered.
Issues is not the way work is done is repo
Usually the most pertaining factor, because GitHub issues suck. There are tribes of developers working on something off GitHub (Discord/Email/Whatever) and issues is where end users come and report bugs or feature requests.
I don't know what is the best way to start contributing, maybe it still might be browsing this page, I just wish more projects took the time to making this page more useful. When you create a "good first issue", think of it as paying it forward. You enter a contract with a fragile newbie; be precise, helpful and unassuming.