Comment by paxys
5 years ago
Has anyone (DigitalOcean, Github or others) run numbers on what percentage of casual users are converted into persistent open-source contributors while initially being incentivized by Hacktoberfest? Sure spam is and always will be a problem, but if that first number is significant (of course that's a big if) then it makes sense to encourage this effort by putting in some moderation overtime. As I mentioned elsewhere in the thread I'd very gladly sift through a mountain of spam if it meant getting another reliable maintainer or two for my project.
Probably 0. That number will grow significantly you directly ask contributors during hacktoberfest if they want to become long term contributors.
There are four types of contributors. Project maintainers and team members who are invested in the project. Contributors who want a bug or feature implemented and will do it themselves. Those who want to contribute to opensource projects but can't decide on which project or issue to work on but hacktoberfest gives them an excuse to just pick any project and if you ask them directly they might stick. Finally there are those who only do it for external rewards.
The people you can reach only through hacktoberfest are the last two groups and only the third group might stay over the long run. The first two groups will always be there, even without hacktoberfest.
I would expect that percentage to be very, very low. In fact, among the people who are making spam PRs, such as adding "amazing project" to the README, I would not be surprised if that number was zero, or at least close to it.
I suspect a one off external gift is not going to get many long term committed maintainers. The two just require such different motivations and reasons for doing the activity. But I may be wrong.