Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

joel.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 511 posts

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#101

Post by quadrifoliate »

higerordermap wrote: post #89
quadrifoliate wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am an Indian, and I think I have no right to complain about that reputation. I think that we are in agreement regarding that? I have no right to complain about it either. I can offer advice to bypass Open Source contributions altogether, which would have the side effect of stopping incidents like this. And it's not like projects are starved for README contributions either, coding bootcamps or someone else will pi…

Then, should we stop writing good code because some shitheads set a bad example? Let me be clear, when you write open source code there are incentives like creating / improving tool for our own use, experimenting, or having a legitimate contribution, even if it is for sake of resume. The software we want to write as OSS is often not the software we can write as proprietary, sell and make money. Should we give up all…

> Then, should we stop writing good code because some shitheads set a bad example?

No, I'm saying that we should write great code, and not open source any of it. I don't understand why the concept is so unpopular?

> It's not like anyone says "He is Indian, his contribution is probably worthless" about Sanjay Ghemawat or Vikram Adve, right?

Absolutely not. But I think that today, if Ghemawat made a typo fix contribution to 10 random projects for Hacktoberfest, at least one of those project maintainers who didn't know about him would be yelling about "spam". I'm not sure how to prove this; maybe someone who knows him can ask him to try? :) This is HN after all.

Also, since you bring it up, I'm guessing that the vast majority of Sanjay's code at Google is proprietary and not available to the world.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#102

Post by stickupkid »

neom wrote: post #37
Google234 wrote: post #12

The shitoberfest Twitter account is hilarious. https://mobile.twitter.com/shitoberfest

You know, as one of the people who sat in a room with my colleagues, listening them talk about the hours and hour of thinking they had done around how to contribute meaningfully to OSS, revising and revising till they landed on hacktoberfest, I don't find this hilarious in the least. I talked to many maintainers in the first few years of it's existence who truly benefited from the contributions. Nothing we ever did a…

(parent post tried to abolish blame and called out the grandparent post as the issue, hence why the lack of continuation)

I don't, you messed up!

The fact that you're actually incentivising contributors to make PRs of any quality and without standards, whilst forcing the burden on to maintainers (without reward) and you do very little (no tutorials about how to make quality PRs, no standards information on what comprises of a good PR, no quality guidance what so ever!).

This seems like a marketing stunt that has backfired and you're saying that you don't deserve some backlash?

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#103

Post by saagarjha »

tzs wrote: post #73
SirSavary wrote: post #2

It's convenient that Digital Ocean has a scapegoat for 2020 but his video doesn't explain the previous years of spammy pull requests.

Was it much of a problem before this year? Looking back at all prior HN stories with "hacktoberfest" in the title or with "hacktoberfest" and "spam" in the comments, I can't find any that talk about it being a big problem before this year. I found one maintainer who said they got a non-negligible number of garbage pull requests for it, but they still said Hacktoberfest was cool. There was also one post about a filter…

Same. I don’t think I got a single spammy PR I could attribute to Hacktoberfest before this year, I had thought it must be people staying inside for COVID or something. But I guess I know the actual cause now.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#104

Post by imheretolearn »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #83
hombre_fatal wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No reason to lie low, just continue making good, earnest PRs which look nothing like this Hacktoberfest spam. It's not the username in these examples that's the problem.

> It's not the username in these examples that's the problem. It totally is. Make a profile with a Western-sounding, preferably female name, and submit a similar typo-fix PR. I can guarantee you that it will be accepted, or at the very least, not featured on a Twitter account called "Shitoberfest". Minor typo fixes and such have been an established way to make a first bite-sized contribution to OSS projects. What cha…

>> It totally is. Make a profile with a Western-sounding, preferably female name, and submit a similar typo-fix PR. I can guarantee you that it will be accepted, or at the very least, not featured on a Twitter account called "Shitoberfest".

I have made a genuine typo fixing PR and it was accepted by the repo. And yes, I don't belong to the group you refer to in your comment. I don't know what's happened with you or why you feel that way. It would be better to support your point with an example or an incident.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#105

Post by quadrifoliate »

saagarjha wrote: post #98
quadrifoliate wrote: post #45

[edit: Possibly I'm being too hasty in recommending swearing off Open Source contributions. Go forth and contribute, I suppose :) Leaving my original comment below for completeness.] For other South Asian/Indian people like me, a pessimistic but practical counterpoint to this -- if you happen to be Indian and have a username that marks you as such, just lie low for a bit and don't contribute anything; especially duri…

No. Just look at my username; you don’t get more Indian-sounding than that. The way forward is to submit high-quality pull requests, not spam them to get a free T-shirt, and certainly not to give up and let people ruin it for you. I personally guarantee you that it’ll work out.

> Just look at my username; you don’t get more Indian-sounding than that.

I know, right! Incidentally, a past draft of my advice was going to refer to you and 'manishearth on the Rust core team as "good" examples to emulate. All this talk about "Shitoberfest" and such is driving me up the wall though.

I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. I feel like we are not welcome, but I guess a lot of people in this thread are saying otherwise, so I should consider that perspective.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#106

Post by saagarjha »

susam wrote: post #85

On the topic of pull request (PR) spam originating due to Hacktoberfest, here is some useful information from Hacktoberfest FAQ [1]: "As a maintainer, how should I handle spam pull requests? We dislike seeing spam pull requests just as much as you, so please give them an invalid or spam label and close them. Pull requests that contain a label with the word invalid or spam won't be counted toward Hacktoberfest." It is…

It’s still work, though. I assume for most people it’s not a big deal, but I have heard of maintainers of many popular projects being inundated with spam-which they, not DigitalOcean-need to deal with.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#107

Post by throwaway24324 »

tom-_- wrote: post #70

Spam PRs are frustrating but this rant just reads as petty and vindictive. The author claims that he doesn't "want to cancel or shame him personally", which just rings of false humility considering he named the article "How One Guy Ruined #Hacktoberfest2020" and then chose to expose his Youtube name repeatedly, something even other frustrated tweeters chose NOT to do. Here's what CodeWithHarry did: He created an exam…

You forget to mention the part where he says "not to spend too much time" on the pull requests.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#108

Post by lovecg »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #83
hombre_fatal wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No reason to lie low, just continue making good, earnest PRs which look nothing like this Hacktoberfest spam. It's not the username in these examples that's the problem.

> It's not the username in these examples that's the problem. It totally is. Make a profile with a Western-sounding, preferably female name, and submit a similar typo-fix PR. I can guarantee you that it will be accepted, or at the very least, not featured on a Twitter account called "Shitoberfest". Minor typo fixes and such have been an established way to make a first bite-sized contribution to OSS projects. What cha…

That’s not what’s happening here. Have you actually looked at the examples of the PRs linked? They’re not fixing minor typos, they’re introducing nonsensical copy pasted changes. These are not low effort commits that you could argue don’t hurt the project — these are quite literally spam.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#109

Post by hombre_fatal »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #101
higerordermap wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then, should we stop writing good code because some shitheads set a bad example? Let me be clear, when you write open source code there are incentives like creating / improving tool for our own use, experimenting, or having a legitimate contribution, even if it is for sake of resume. The software we want to write as OSS is often not the software we can write as proprietary, sell and make money. Should we give up all…

> Then, should we stop writing good code because some shitheads set a bad example? No, I'm saying that we should write great code, and not open source any of it. I don't understand why the concept is so unpopular? > It's not like anyone says "He is Indian, his contribution is probably worthless" about Sanjay Ghemawat or Vikram Adve, right? Absolutely not. But I think that today, if Ghemawat made a typo fix contributi…

Which of the article examples (or in-the-wild hacktoberfest PR) is a case of a "typo fix contribution" that you think was unfairly rejected?

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#110

Post by asicsp »

random_visitor wrote: post #57

Some people are giving him the benefit of doubt because you don't understand hindi. Please don't. This person really did encourage his 600k+ subscribers to spam the PRs in no uncertain words. He explained how developers with swag clothing and brand stickers look cool and get respect. He told people "it won't improve you much as a developer. But hey, free t-shirt swag, and there's a well defined path to get it. I requ…

>I'm college student (graduating in about 8 months) and I'll highlight that there's a very massive guidance problem here. Enthusiastic students have no one to mentored and direct them and it makes them act on lot of bad advice.

Hey, I'd like to help if possible. I'd probably not have the time to mentor, but I can help with learning resources. All my books are free to read online (https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course#ebooks) and I have lots of bookmarks collected over the years. For example, Python(https://learnbyexample.github.io/py_resources/) and CS(https://github.com/learnbyexample/curated_resources/blob/mas...)

If you are interested, connect with me on twitter (https://twitter.com/learn_byexample) or mail me on gmail (use HN username)

PS: I'm Indian too, but I don't think that'll necessarily help here.

Post reply on HN