Comment by compscistd
5 years ago
I've been a developer for 5 years. One of my 2020 goals, aided by being stuck at home because of a certain pandemic, is to make the leap to being a contributor in an open source project I care about.
One of my coworkers shared Hacktoberfest details and I got really fired up! I looked through repositories I could reasonably contribute bug fixes or light features to. Got myself familiar with the codebases, PR process, Hacktoberfest guidelines (that are very clear about spammy contributions).
Then reading this and seeing some of the bogus contributions myself (some by contributors who coincidentally share my name!), I don't know how to feel about this. Maybe keep up my laziness streak and punt my contributions to November (and reward myself with nerdy apparel!)? Or take this as a fun opportunity to redeem my name?
No need to be shy! Quality work is quality work, no matter when it is submitted, and earlier is usually better! If DO is going to give out free t-shirts, there's no reason to purposefully deprive yourself of them just because someone wrote a blog post.
The Julia Language [0] gets some spammy issues/pull requests as well (not only during October) and while we have the benefit of dozens of maintainers such that it's bearable, I definitely sympathize with the issues OP is dealing with. Opt-in could be a good idea, although as usual, the issue is scaling and verification.
[0] https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia
Nah, kick the laziness and get in there and do something! Good contributions stay good contributions.
Ha, that's a pretty good point! I doubt contributors will see good PRs as spam, even if it does have to be sifted through a puddle of nonsense.