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What was your favorite Hacktoberfest experience?

BekahHW on November 01, 2022

We've wrapped another Hacktoberfest season, and we want to hear all about your great experiences!

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Jakub T. Jankiewicz • Edited

I didn't participate as contributor, but it was nice that people controbuted in my projects. I think that the best thing is that few people was able to go into my project and fix typos and grammar error in my documentation that was included with the code.

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BekahHW

Yes! Every PR merged in is valuable. I'm always up for merging PRs that fix those.

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Nerando Johnson

Creating something that people gonna use as a resource.

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BekahHW

Love it! Do you have a link?

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Nerando Johnson • Edited
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Rishav Mitra

I got to learn a few new things like Astro, GitHub actions, and the Twitter API. Above all the community of Open Source is awesome and welcoming. Hoping to contribute more and more going forward.

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Michael Jolley

I love Astro and GitHub Actions. You're speaking my language now!

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BekahHW

That sounds awesome! What did you do with the Twitter API 👀

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Rishav Mitra

It was actually this project Real time Twitter Data Analysis to which I contributed.

I did build a Twitter bot before but it was interesting to work with streaming tweets 🚀

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BekahHW

That looks really cool!

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chamodperera

It was an interesting experience, and always has been. This is my 3rd time participating.
Actually, this year's t-shirt design awsome.😃

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BekahHW

Love the t-shirt design!

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Chris Jarvis

Providing a repo that allowed fresh developers get a PR in their first HacktoberFest.

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BekahHW

I love that so much. Decreasing barriers to entry is so important.

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Nabil Alamin

It was an interesting experience, was my first time participating Hacktoberfest...started out rocky, but I managed to pull through, and I am looking forward to next year

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BekahHW

Woohoo! Congratulations and keep up the good work!

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Moritz Eckert

I like the idea and the spirit of Hacktoberfest.
However, participating for the first time this year as a project I'm not convinced it works out.
I feel like the focus is less on using Hacktoberfest as a stepping stone to get into OSS development and more about just getting some commit into a prestigious project for the sake of glory.

What I'm missing here is the sustainability, the long term prospect.
Of course, it's the project's responsibility to reduce the entry barriers and make it as easy as possible to participate and ofc it's also the project's responsibility to guide/mentor potential new contributors.
In that regard, the GSOC seems to have a more sustainable concept.
On the other hand the low effort and low entry barrier for Hacktoberfest is what makes it appealing for both sides.

Would love to hear the experience from other projects and what you do to attract and most importantly retain new contributors?

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BekahHW

From a maintainer's viewpoint, I think Hacktoberfest is a nice time to onboard new contributors and to find ways to build community around your project so you can be sustainable. Sometimes building community might mean joining other communities that participate in OSS projects or are interested in them so you can share new issues, continue to celebrate contributions, and invest in the growth of the project.