4 ms·

Hi, I'm shitoberfest. Tag me with hacktoberfest vandalism

49 points by ghuntley 6y ago

nikivi 6y ago
Can you close PRs for repos for a month for users that were created in last week?
- detaro 6y ago
  you can probably script that through the API, but not with the normal tools.
  - judge2020 6y ago
    I think they meant giving repos an option to (temporarily) disallow PRs from new GH accounts.
- coldpie 6y ago
  I believe it is impossible to close PRs, period. https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/84 https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/84
- corobo 6y ago
  Yes. As of a few hours ago :)
deepakkarki 6y ago
Here is the github wide list of spam PRs. https://github.com/search?p=5&q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed+label%3Aspam+created%3A%3E%3D2020-09-30&type=Issues https://github.com/search?p=5&q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed+label%3A... Scanning through the usernames and clicking on a few accounts, over 90% seem to be from college students in India :(
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- DarthGhandi 6y ago
  Are you honestly that surprised? People have started to value things like GitHub forks and stars as though they mean something. Create a metric and it will get abused, this is how the world works.
  - ardfard 6y ago
    See Cobra Effect[1] which (ironically) named after an anecdote originated from India [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
  - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
    Stars usually mean your project is useful to someone, so they are indeed nice to see. They're also an endorsement of people who use a project and are apparently happy, so the project is more likely to do what it says and do it well. These metrics aren't usually a problem until people attempt to game the system like it's done on platforms like youtube, but I'm not aware of this happening on github (at least not often).
- mk_chan 6y ago
  Not surprising to me (I'm in India), whenever I've reviewed someone's resume and they have a GitHub it's always a few dark green dots on a few days in an entire year for several years (and often just 2 years). Pretty sure it's done for no reason other than to check a box on some recruiting agency's form "I contribute to open source"
prophesi 6y ago
Previous discussion on Hacktober Fest's PR spam: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24643894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24643894
coldpie 6y ago
In the Wine project, which dates back to the mid-90s, we still use a mailing list for patch submission[1]. Every year we get some complaints that it's hard to use, and that we should switch to GitHub or set up a GitLab instance or something to encourage more submissions. And maybe we should. But it does keep out crap like this. Wine's a fairly high profile project, especially among "low-information" users. Would the increase in useful submissions justify the cost of having to deal with low-quality submissions? Are there any devs out there who both can hack on Wine and can't figure out an email client? I don't know. [1] https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2020-October/thread.html https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2020-October/thr...
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
  Barriers to entry are good sometimes. Linus was right about GitHub's PR feature. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-5654674 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56546...
- woodrowbarlow 6y ago
  linus torvalds has a good (but unnecessarily vitriolic) explanation for why he only uses github as a read-only mirror. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-5659933 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56599... basically: he has high expectations for the raw text formatting of a commit message and discussion threads, and github's web interface lacks the necessary controls.
  - corobo 6y ago
    [2012]
- brodock 6y ago
  Using something like GitHub or GitLab brings transparency to the process and that encourages contribution. You can still prevent low-quality contributions with some bot automation (like ensuring a template is followed etc). GNOME project has become more approachable for a lot of people since they moved to GitLab: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/09/08/gnome-follow-up/ https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/09/08/gnome-follow-up/ (Even though I don't have the right skills to "hack" into most of GNOME projects, I can read C code and can provide useful issue submissions, but would not do any of that if I had to subscribe to a mailing list.
jordan801 6y ago
I haven't done much open source contribution, but it seems like we should be able to write some kind of flagging/filter system to check if PR's are quality. One-liners and comment modification? Highly suspect. Although I am not sure what GitHub offers as far as PR management API. Just from what I am seeing on this Twitter, it seems pretty clear that there are some easily identifiable patterns. i.e. "Amazing". - https://twitter.com/ryan_southgate/status/1311645935961804800 https://twitter.com/ryan_southgate/status/131164593596180480... I could be just completely out of touch with opensource.

49 points by ghuntley 6y ago

nikivi 6y ago

Can you close PRs for repos for a month for users that were created in last week?

detaro 6y ago
you can probably script that through the API, but not with the normal tools.
- judge2020 6y ago
  I think they meant giving repos an option to (temporarily) disallow PRs from new GH accounts.
coldpie 6y ago
I believe it is impossible to close PRs, period. https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/84 https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/84
corobo 6y ago
Yes. As of a few hours ago :)

deepakkarki 6y ago

Here is the github wide list of spam PRs. https://github.com/search?p=5&q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed+label%3Aspam+created%3A%3E%3D2020-09-30&type=Issues https://github.com/search?p=5&q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed+label%3A... Scanning through the usernames and clicking on a few accounts, over 90% seem to be from college students in India :(

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
DarthGhandi 6y ago
Are you honestly that surprised? People have started to value things like GitHub forks and stars as though they mean something. Create a metric and it will get abused, this is how the world works.
- ardfard 6y ago
  See Cobra Effect[1] which (ironically) named after an anecdote originated from India [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
  Stars usually mean your project is useful to someone, so they are indeed nice to see. They're also an endorsement of people who use a project and are apparently happy, so the project is more likely to do what it says and do it well. These metrics aren't usually a problem until people attempt to game the system like it's done on platforms like youtube, but I'm not aware of this happening on github (at least not often).
mk_chan 6y ago
Not surprising to me (I'm in India), whenever I've reviewed someone's resume and they have a GitHub it's always a few dark green dots on a few days in an entire year for several years (and often just 2 years). Pretty sure it's done for no reason other than to check a box on some recruiting agency's form "I contribute to open source"

prophesi 6y ago

Previous discussion on Hacktober Fest's PR spam: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24643894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24643894

coldpie 6y ago

In the Wine project, which dates back to the mid-90s, we still use a mailing list for patch submission[1]. Every year we get some complaints that it's hard to use, and that we should switch to GitHub or set up a GitLab instance or something to encourage more submissions. And maybe we should. But it does keep out crap like this. Wine's a fairly high profile project, especially among "low-information" users. Would the increase in useful submissions justify the cost of having to deal with low-quality submissions? Are there any devs out there who both can hack on Wine and can't figure out an email client? I don't know. [1] https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2020-October/thread.html https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2020-October/thr...

bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
Barriers to entry are good sometimes. Linus was right about GitHub's PR feature. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-5654674 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56546...
woodrowbarlow 6y ago
linus torvalds has a good (but unnecessarily vitriolic) explanation for why he only uses github as a read-only mirror. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-5659933 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56599... basically: he has high expectations for the raw text formatting of a commit message and discussion threads, and github's web interface lacks the necessary controls.
- corobo 6y ago
  [2012]
brodock 6y ago
Using something like GitHub or GitLab brings transparency to the process and that encourages contribution. You can still prevent low-quality contributions with some bot automation (like ensuring a template is followed etc). GNOME project has become more approachable for a lot of people since they moved to GitLab: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/09/08/gnome-follow-up/ https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/09/08/gnome-follow-up/ (Even though I don't have the right skills to "hack" into most of GNOME projects, I can read C code and can provide useful issue submissions, but would not do any of that if I had to subscribe to a mailing list.

jordan801 6y ago

I haven't done much open source contribution, but it seems like we should be able to write some kind of flagging/filter system to check if PR's are quality. One-liners and comment modification? Highly suspect. Although I am not sure what GitHub offers as far as PR management API. Just from what I am seeing on this Twitter, it seems pretty clear that there are some easily identifiable patterns. i.e. "Amazing". - https://twitter.com/ryan_southgate/status/1311645935961804800 https://twitter.com/ryan_southgate/status/131164593596180480... I could be just completely out of touch with opensource.