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One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

joel.net

261–270 of 511 posts

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#261

This is not only kind of spam going on here. A twitter user mentioned that some youtubers are themselves creating assignment aggregation type repos, and encouraging their viewers to contribute some copy paste code to those repos and they approve the pull request. That's insane. I feel ashamed to say I am an Indian.

I would not be too harsh. This way it does not spam normal repos.

[deleted]

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#262

This is not only kind of spam going on here. A twitter user mentioned that some youtubers are themselves creating assignment aggregation type repos, and encouraging their viewers to contribute some copy paste code to those repos and they approve the pull request. That's insane. I feel ashamed to say I am an Indian.

> I feel ashamed to say I am an Indian.

I disagree with you.

It's a common thing that online polls/contests/games generate this kind of behaviour. Online polls a trolled, games are hacked and online contests that rely on making others work create a mess.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#263
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is not spam. It's based on morons trying to make it in the software world without any basis that they should be there. They're doing this so that they can put "I have x amount of accepted pullrequests on github" and fool an employer to hire them. To become shit team members or outsourced to become shit offshore team members*. I have seen these kinds in many a project. Real world experience. Real talk.

The major incentive here is a free tshirt

...that you can wear to an interview?

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#264

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…

> his "crack it" is basically about "Gaming it" and succeed at it any how.

While I don't disagree with the rest of your comment, this is not accurate. Unacademy focuses on test prep and thier anthem while sappy and gung ho, doesn't really have any references to gaming the system. Crack it is in the same vein as Cracking the Coding Interview,

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#265
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't highlighted high enough, and the lack of what makes a good PR that shows new contributors the best way forward isn't shown enough. Yet I standby my statement, you're not blameless here.

Would you be willing to share what you'd recommend? I don't work at DigitalOcean but I know a few of the folks working on hacktoberfesst and I'm happy to forward our suggestions. je at h4x dot club.

Only count pull requests that are merged. Make this fact obvious on the hacktoberfest website so contributors know spamming PRs will not help them.

I know the standard answer to this is that it would exclude some repos (ex: node) that merge PRs manually via git. However:

1. You already are excluding every open source project not on GitHub, so this is a really weak point.

2. I am extremely confident trading off not including a very small subset of repos for removing the incentive to spam bad PRs is a worthwhile trade.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#266

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 "gro…

Can agree. Gaming the system was the norm in Russia. E.g. you couldn't buy or sell apartments. If you wanted one, you had to "move in" with someone and the other person would then "move out" later. Payment was handled under the radar.

Hearing the stories from my parents, just getting furniture for a new apartment was already hard, since sometimes it just was not available.

This mentality now still lives on in a lot of us.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#268
post #62

I received two pull requests for two projects on GitHub last night. I am the author of one and the maintainer of the other. At first, the pull requests did not make sense at all. One of them made minor changes to a README, e.g., changing "this book" to "the book". It was not fixing a typo or incorrect grammar. It was merely choosing a word different from the one I had chosen. In fact, I preferred "this book", so the…

But this is not spam. It's based on morons trying to make it in the software world without any basis that they should be there. They're doing this so that they can put "I have x amount of accepted pullrequests on github" and fool an employer to hire them. To become shit team members or outsourced to become shit offshore team members*. I have seen these kinds in many a project. Real world experience. Real talk.

> They're doing this so that they can put "I have x amount of accepted pullrequests on github" and fool an employer to hire them.

Yes, I have seen a bunch of those on popular repositories over the years. It is an annoyance, but usually so little, even on popular repos (I contributed much to PHP as example of project size) that it's easy to ignore (or even simply merge if it's somewhat useful, the fooling won't lead them far)

The difference with this marketing stunt is that there is way more active encouragement for that and way more of it at once ... multiple a day instead of one every few months

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#269
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is they may not. For all we know, they're hearing about pull requests the first time and just seeing the presenter showing how easy it is to do, by altering/adding a few words, and get a free t-shirt. I think the blame is all on the channel. The least he could've made a proper pull request by fixing an issue. That said, the blame should also go on DO since they could've made hacktoberfest opt-in. Instead th…

Plenty of blame for both. The channel is appealing to people to spam crap PRs to inactive projects for the sole purpose of winning some swag, and his followers go spam projects for the sole purpose of winning swag. One guy encourages people to be assholes, and the people respond by acting like assholes. Both leader and followers are wrong in this case.

Very good point. I certainly did not want to give the guy who encouraged them a break.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#270

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…

One more very Indian thing perhaps also is we like to gladly flog ourselves and jump at the chance of discrediting our people. We will start with "As an Indian" but end with "They" instead of "We"
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