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One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

joel.net

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Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mentioned this because I've seen people bash Indians for ruining sites like Quora and Medium with lot of bad quality content. Spam job offers, freelancing sites with bloated profiles, sending unsolicited messages and resume to people in LinkedIn and AngelList. Much of this comes from us having 1/6 of world's population, but that doesn't excuse a big group from their misdeeds. I personally believe that there's a nee…

I'm almost afraid to ask this, so please assume good intent and bear with me - I promise this is a genuine question :) Different cultures definitely consider different things to be acceptable / polite / etc in the same situation (e.g., do you take your shoes off when entering another person's house?). I've heard that there's groups of Indians (possibly the descendants of certain castes?) that place a high value on en…

Nope. As the parent comment said, there is lack of guidance and mentorship. Many people are unaware of the spam they are creating and genuinely believe what they are doing is acceptable.

Culturally, India is not really homogenous so I can't say anything for the 1.34 billion people but at least in the region I live in, cheating is normalized since first grade. Be it contests, exams or any other status games. Shortcuts are encouraged. There is little incentive for anyone to play fair. Schools want to look good on paper and competitive so they help students cheat, pay for false advertisements and enrollment. Parents do the same and well, kids will learn it if you incentivise that.

For the job seeking, it's pretty much desperation and high unemployment rate.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#182
I mean, I don't condone what the youtuber did, but I'm not sure who the author is trying to kid here.

"I don't think he's a bad person and don't want to shame him.

> Literally writes an essay on his very public blog shaming the guy and showing his username/channel repeatedly

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#183
post #49
post #40

I agree that the spam is problematic, but I feel the need to call out his "data collection". As evidence that CodeWithHarry is the cause, he says > A search for "Amazing Project" is now showing 21,177 issues. and > A search for "improve docs" shows 319,251 issues. ??? Improve docs has been a common beginner level PR since the beginning of time. Do you really think that 319k spam issues have been filed in the last day…

A lot of those accounts also seem to be created just a few hours before October 1st. Can GitHub time gate new accounts before that can make public PRs?

I think this would be a bad direction. I bet that most people create an account on GitHub to report an issue or create a pull request directly. I think this should be encouraged.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#184

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 request every one of my followers to make 20 spam PRs so at least 4 sit for more than a week

Is this true? I don’t speak Hindi but this is exactly opposite to what the pull quotes on the original article say that he said.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#185

I mean, I don't condone what the youtuber did, but I'm not sure who the author is trying to kid here. "I don't think he's a bad person and don't want to shame him. > Literally writes an essay on his very public blog shaming the guy and showing his username/channel repeatedly

When we review a serious flaw which caused downtime in production, we aren’t wishy-washy around who and what caused the failure. However, it’s expected that everyone knows it’s a mistake and not deliberate and that there will be an effort to improve and rectify the situation.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#186
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know why the protagonist being Indian is something that would be strongly remembered. I’d guess anyone whose audience has more time than money could’ve hatched a scheme like this, regardless of nationality.

Unfortunately the largest demographic always gets demonized even if spam is not just limited to a particular group. Through sheer scale, spammers of Indian origin may be more noticeable than others and thus reinforcing the stereotype.

Eh, I would the say the ratio itself looks bad here. I am always surprised by how normalized and acceptable spamming is in the form of whatsapp forwarding. It's truly frightening watching my family use facebook and whatsapp groups. The spam to content ratio is like 10:1 or heck 20:1. Maybe even worse. .

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#187

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…

> Enthusiastic students have no one to mentored and direct them and it makes them act on lot of bad advice.

I think this gives the spammers too easy an out.

They're adults who live in a society. They know full well that spamming is not OK, either offline or online. They also know that what they're doing is spamming, not accidentally overly fervent contributions.

Don't cut them any slack. This is pure and simple vandalism with a profit motive.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#188

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 request every one of my followers to make 20 spam PRs so at least 4 sit for more than a week Is this true? I don’t speak Hindi but this is exactly opposite to what the pull quotes on the original article say that he said.

He did, his statements (translated to English) were:

-"Don't send PR to popular repos, they'll mark it as spam"

-"Send PR to repo with little activity, it'll increase the chances that it'll sit for 7 days. The lesser known a repo is the better, 4 out of 20 is doable"

-"Hacktoberfest has had seasons when they didn't get enough participants and had leftover merch. I request every single one of you to go grab one"

The thumbnail can be translated to "Big Co. distributing free t-shirts, go grab 'em"

Also, his previous pinned comment asked people to tell him about swag-grabbing tactics from other events so he can make another video on it (There was a comment where he was enquiring a guy on how to get Azure merch). His entire video was appalling to go through.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#189
post #176
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think hundreds of maintainers have to clean up their repos? What is your acceptable ratio of misuse to value add?

So it was a net positive thing, and the suffering of some maintainers are acceptable, just so DigitalOcean can slap its name and claim it helps opensource? Just donate money or something man. Jesus fucking christ.

Donate money to whom?
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