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One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

joel.net

321–330 of 511 posts

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#321
post #37

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…

>is certainly not constructive

Digital Ocean is not a student under our guidance that we owe a supportive feedback style. They don't even behave like a peer where things can be discussed eye to eye. They interact like a business: as if they're correct and infallible until sufficiently proven wrong that their face is covered in egg.

>posts like "Finally, and most importantly, we can remember that this is how DigitalOcean treats the open source maintainer community, and stay away from their products going forward." is certainly not constructive

That's entirely constructive advice... for the end consumer. It is smart to remember the results of a business' prior actions when you consider future dealings with them. Even if they're all well-intentioned and lovely people that wielded their one-to-many relationship poorly.

>I take real issue with all the vitriol.

The mirth of a "shitoberfest" twitter account and consumer advice in a blogpost aren't all that vitriolic, what they are is simply not friendly to DO.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#322
post #306

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…

"Gaming the system" is also a cultural thing in Greece. In fact, it's so expected that you are perceived to be either out of the loop or a fool for not going the extra mile. I broke friendships with people who claimed that "it's all subjective at the end of the day" whenever I was raising ethical/moral concerns. Imagine not being able to provide a reasonable argument to justify your actions, beyond of "because I'm al…

The exactly same goes for Brazil. Am I seeing a pattern here, i.e. countries that are supposed to be great but really aren't?

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorting by relevance doesn't get you a representative sample - that bubbles PRs who say "amazing project" in the title to the top(which are indeed mostly spam). If you restrict it to "in:title", you see that there's only 44: https://github.com/search?q=in%3Atitle+amazing+project+creat... And if you sort by "newest" or "oldest", which provide a more representative sample, you can see that most of them are not spam: ht…

Typically the PRs are titled something like "Improve docs" and the change is to add "an amazing project" somewhere in the README.md. Here's a search that finds a lot: https://github.com/search?q=in%3Atitle+improve+created%3A%3E...

This search makes the same mistake I mentioned above - you think it finds a lot because you're sorting by "relevant" and sampling.

Sort by newest and you'll see that the vast majority of these PR's are legitimate: https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=in%3Atitle+improve+create...

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#325
post #316
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is gaming the system, if you ask me. Cracking coding interviews would be considered “overfitting” in statistical learning parlance. You may ace the interview, but for most people the performance at coding interviews has no correlation with performance in actual work.

Learning for test is gaming the system? Seriously?

Yes it is, while the tests are obviously imperfect, the intent is to be a proxy for a wider set of skills and knowledge to be tested.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

I trust people who talk negatively about their own culture more than I trust people who talk positively. Every culture has lots of dumb stuff, and people who are willing to talk negatively about it strike me as more open-minded.

I can understand and relate to the point you raise. Constructive criticism and self retrospection is a key marker of any progressive society. The slight caveat is that each society is in a varying state at any given time. India has gone through a full circle from peak, to trough to hopefully a rising future. At this stage of the society, confidence is very fragile and mindset conflicted across the glorious to the defeated to the hopeful. This why you see the spectrum of emotions. As with personal image and attitude being sculpted for success, a nation's image and attitude need to be sculpted for success too.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#327

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…

Pathological behavior being part of a culture isn't an excuse for it. If everyone acted this way open source couldn't exist.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorting by relevance doesn't get you a representative sample - that bubbles PRs who say "amazing project" in the title to the top(which are indeed mostly spam). If you restrict it to "in:title", you see that there's only 44: https://github.com/search?q=in%3Atitle+amazing+project+creat... And if you sort by "newest" or "oldest", which provide a more representative sample, you can see that most of them are not spam: ht…

Why restrict in title though? From parent reply it is obvious that the phrase isn't in title yet it is undeniably spam.

I'm trying to get a lower bound on spam PRs filed. If you sort by oldest (instead of by "relevance" as the parent commenter did) and do a spot check, you'll see that a lot of the PR's are legitimate: https://github.com/search?o=asc&q=amazing+project+created%3A...

Certainly, restricting to the title misses plenty of PRs. But his search provides 252 PRs, and I'd estimate that easily <100 of them are spam.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#329
post #316
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is gaming the system, if you ask me. Cracking coding interviews would be considered “overfitting” in statistical learning parlance. You may ace the interview, but for most people the performance at coding interviews has no correlation with performance in actual work.

Learning for test is gaming the system? Seriously?

Depending on the extent, of course it is.

Imagine I'm taking Calculus 2 and I have a choice to learn the material and take the final exam "cold" or I can get the final exam a few months ahead of time and simply memorize the symbols I need to write into the exam booklet. The latter is self-evidently gaming the system.

When primary school teachers teach directly towards the assessment exam, they are only incidentally teaching the subject and are primarily (IMO) gaming the system as well.

Re: One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020

#330

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…

> If not I might as well do this and earn Rs. 100. In fact this attitude is cultivated from childhood in certain business class families. Don't let go of any opportunity of earning a profit, however small it might be. The Ferengi from Star Trek come to mind when I read this. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi * https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ferengi The Rules of Acquisition are always a fun read: * https:/…

General opinion for decades has been the Ferengi are specifically anti-Semitic stereotypes rather than generic Mediterranean-area stereotypes.
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