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One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

joel.net

251–260 of 511 posts

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#251
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…

Love this one — somebody is trying to rename "package.json" into "package": https://github.com/dinosaurjs/website/pull/28

"An amazing project!" is going to part of dev culture for years, at least some circles.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#253

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…

> CodeWithHarry is not a bad guy, I don't want to cancel or shame him I say, cancel him. And all his fans. CC's think they're hot shit because they can produce a video and upload it to youtube, forgetting entirely that it is the content of the video that gives it any worth. We hate on moronic Medium posts idiotic PR releases, and other low-effort media, why should this be any different? If he deputizes his audience t…

Disagree. It is a problem with hype and code being more centralized. Yes, an annoying for many, but to say this ruined anything is probably exaggerated.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#254

Gosh, I couldn't understand what is going on. I thought some students from India want to have a PR accepted to a popular repo. Just look t those: https://github.com/kotartemiy/newscatcher/pulls

These are seriously cracking me up.

PR: Improve ocs [sic]

    - 
    + This is an amazing project made to dimplify [sic] things 

    - However, not all topics are supported.
    + However,not all topics are supported.

    - We are glad that you liked our package.
    + We are glad about all those who liked our package.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#255
post #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 vanda…

You alone are not a spammer. You would need to anticipate the behavior of others. That there are 4 or 5 people on the internet is something that is slowly learned.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#256
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major incentive here is a free tshirt

Good point. I guess that's even worse. Hillarious really. Like something out of a Rick and Morty episode. You couldn't make this up.

The episode name would be something like "haker man" And Ricky (drunk like always) would probably say: "Morty, gonna tell you something, everybody these days call themselves 'programmers/coders/hackers' all they do is watch a Javascript Course, barely, type some stupid shit like 'Hello World' and they feel like a great scientist Morty, you really understand how stupid is this, Morty?! They share that in all the 'social media' trendy moron stuffy like Twitter, a place even more cancerous than me Morty. In the end Morty, burrp, I'm actually the Genius who discovered Time Travel and invented the Portal Gun."

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#257

As an Indian, I think here some points I think western world needs to know about India. * "Gaming the system" to get your desired outcome is widely accepted in Indian society. Especially if it doesn't involve breaking any laws (not ethics). Even in many cases Gaming the system by breaking the law is considered OK as long as one doesn't get caught doing it. (In fact this might be the only way to come up in politics in…

I live in a post-soviet country and the ~50 years of soviet planned-economy, arbitrary laws and constant shortages combined with an illegitimate regime (as any foreign power that is ruling by force on your turf is by definition) meant that people got a pretty deep ingrained attitude of "gaming the system" even tho there's almost 30 years of self rule. It is slowly fading away and being replaced by the capitalist "growth hacking" which I'm not sure is a lot different.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#258
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why the downvotes... the takeaway is it’s extremely easy for maintainers to tell a well intentioned docs change from the crap referenced in this article

Yes. It is easy to tell them apart. But some people are getting over 50 of these in a day, so even if it is easy to tell, it gets annoying and requires you to deal with spam. That is the thing with spam in general - you can tell it from legitimate mail easily, but is it still annoying and requires you to deal with it.

That is why I still prefer old-style patch submissions via mailing lists - the bar is higher, so it usually weeds out exactly this kind of trash.

Of course, if a company started offering free t-shirts for mailing list submissions and some foolish (but well-meaning) youtuber would publish a tutorial on how to subscribe and post to a mailing list, I have no doubts that there would be a deluge regardless of this higher bar. :)

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#259

Gosh, I couldn't understand what is going on. I thought some students from India want to have a PR accepted to a popular repo. Just look t those: https://github.com/kotartemiy/newscatcher/pulls

These are seriously cracking me up. PR: Improve ocs [sic] - + This is an amazing project made to dimplify [sic] things - However, not all topics are supported. + However,not all topics are supported. - We are glad that you liked our package. + We are glad about all those who liked our package.

I mean really, I have an incredibly long README. They could spend like 20 mins finding some real improvements and I'd accept that.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#260
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I talked to many maintainers in the first few years of it's existence who truly benefited from the contributions. For sure, but the Hacktoberfest promotional website treats this as a second order effect, instead of the primary goal it really should be. The primary motivation for participants is the free t-shirt, because that's the incentive that's being pushed. What is not promoted - and should be promoted - is the…

Yes, you're absolutely correct.
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