What I Learned From Hacktoberfest
I was having fun working on different interesting projects, It surely opened a wider door for open-source communities to global networking and collaboration.
However, let's talk about the elephant 🐘 in the room...
Hack(Spam?)toberfest
While it has been encouraging developers to get into open-source development, a Hacktoberfest shirt offers a sweeter taste.
It turns out that there are a ton of spam PRs from newly-registered accounts all over the place. Okay, this is not new but it is just simply ugly. Of course, an attempt was made to prevent this from happening; I do appreciate it.
I just wanted to point out that it saddens me as a developer to see this behaviour.
Examples
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Let's do it better and properly next time
P.S. Save READMD.md, Save the World
Top comments (9)
Why it is become spam due to the spam contributor had the mindset of " Wear the Tshirt from some famous Event or IT Company feel pride of it". That why this year I do not create any pull request, I only submit the report for spam repo.
I've been a participant in 4 years now.
This year has the most spam, and therefore also the year where the rules and term of participation got changed. (Now repositories needs to opt-in)
I believe it is all due to the community made around the YouTuber who explicitly vouched for a way of getting a shirt for free.
His examples were spam, and people without OpenSource awareness fell of it instantly.
Either way, I have 7+ repositories opted in, and i haven't personally received any spam thus far. Just one or two dumb PR's not knowing what the repository was made for.
I read somewhere that it’s also a cultural thing that was also in play too. Basically “in their culture they are taught to take what is offered especially if it’s free regardless and it will benefit you”
I’m just paraphrasing and can’t remember exactly where I read this so somebody can correct me or back me up on this
You can report the repository to hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/report
It's very weird spam
To be fair, I think that the organizers have done a really good job handling the spam contributions so far especially after the updated rules.
I've been wondering ever since what people think they gain out of this? Is it the recognition of having added one word to a popular open-source library?
Yeah, people are more into swags now than what was the real essence of organising and investing in this huge event
Hacktoberfest had it coming I would say. I had doubts about the entire premise. I've recorded my thoughts here. youtu.be/INHVFjgnaqg