Comment by treve

I feel the same way, and have a similar experience. Me and many of my friends and co-workers are always excited for October and make meaningful contributions.

I understand there's negative consequences, I also anecdotally believe that Hacktoberfest is a net positive for open source.

That said, last year many repositories popped up with the sole purpose of letting people make garbage PR's to hit the minimum. I have a hard time understanding why someone who is a developer and wants the shirt is comfortable doing this, when all you have to do to really earn it is making meaningful improvements to someone's `README.md`.