8 ms·

I have a couple of vaguely popular repos on github (~100,000 downloads a month) Generally speaking, (T-shirt farming aside), if you find a genuine typo, or sma

by fergie 6y ago

I have a couple of vaguely popular repos on github (~100,000 downloads a month) Generally speaking, (T-shirt farming aside), if you find a genuine typo, or small way to improve documentation, then that PR will be very much appreciated. README-typos are quite visible, yet easy for maintainers to overlook. If you are new to GitHub, please do not be discouraged, and as with editing Wikipedia- be bold. (In the large scheme of things, its really positive that so many people worked out how to make a PR, and were then motivated to do so- lets not shame them too hard. Although occasionally neccessary, we must be mindful about gatekeeping, especially with the young and inexperienced)

jlgaddis 6y ago
Sure, but those types of PRs aren't what's happening here. Check out this PR: https://github.com/OscarZhou/CSharpTraining/pull/1/commits/8e3600fcd5dca8f9f0d16d56237299d893f1aaf6 https://github.com/OscarZhou/CSharpTraining/pull/1/commits/8... How would you like to receive dozens of PRs like that? You would absolutely consider that blatant spam.
- oneeyedpigeon 6y ago
  I think they're referring to one example on Twitter (unfortunately, I can't find it again now) which was calling out a legitimate single-character typo fix. As someone who occasionally likes to report typos, I appreciate someone telling us they're appreciated :)
cbanek 6y ago
I have done one letter typo fixes to doc repos as a 3rd party and felt great about them. One of them was actually a typo in a command line that I found by going through their instructions step by step copying and pasting each line. I was seriously confused when it didn't work!
- dannyw 6y ago
  Yes. Fixing up documentation is always helpful, even if it’s a one letter change! Now, updating “copyright 2018-2019” to “2020” isn’t.
  - rjmunro 6y ago
    The point of the date it to tell people when the material was created. In some jurisdictions / situations, copyright expires N years after it was created, so that date tells people when copyright has expired. Unfortunately, in many cases now, copyright is based on the year the author died, rather than the year the work was created, which means it is much harder to work out if something has entered the public domain. Changing the date without changing the code significantly is arguably fraudulent.
    - noja 6y ago
      > Changing the date without changing the code significantly is arguably fraudulent. In some countries the publishing date is what counts, and they define publishing for websites as when the site was viewed.
      - Zarel 6y ago
        Presumably, even if publishing date is relevant, it's only first publication that's relevant. No work should stay copyrighted forever just because it's constantly being republished.
        noja 6y ago
        > it's only first publication that's relevant. No, the publishing date is relevant (not the first publishing date).
    - schwartzworld 6y ago
      doesn't moving the creation date forward in time make you vulnerable? if you create some content in 2018 and I rip it off in 2019 and then you update your copyright to 2020, what's to stop me from saying I came up with it first?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
watwut 6y ago
The pull request I have seen were changing "how to install" into "how to easily install" and such. They were not fixing typos or even making sentences better. They were just meaningless changes.
- dilyevsky 6y ago
  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
  - watwut 6y ago
    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.
    - pferde 6y ago
      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. :)
      - Freak_NL 6y ago
        As a drive-by contributor to plenty of projects it raises the bar uncomfortably high though. A PR I can rebase and rework based on feedback that can be given right there on the line of code it pertains to. Easy as pie with GitLab or GitHub. Really bothersome with mailing-lists, and excruciatingly painful if they don't even use a modern DVCS like git.
AmIDev 6y ago
One of the PR I made for hacktoberfest was fixing typo in a command in a doc. In the current case however, it seems people are not even trying to do something trivially useful.
mcv 6y ago
Typo fixes are useful. Adding '- an Amazing Project' to a title is not. There's a lot that the guy could have done differently to demonstrate what a legitimate pull request looks like. Because this wasn't it.
dathinab 6y ago
I love it if people send me PR fixing typos or improving documentation. The problem a lot of the hacktober fest PR don't do any of that. E.g. on the rust repo some one added a bunch of PRs which add "### The best" to some readmes.
_wolfie_ 6y ago
On the other hand, I was told by boost project that my one line fix for a typo was "waste of maintainer time", so it seems to vary on per-project basis :)
- rob74 6y ago
  Yeah, some maintainers are friendlier then others, and some seem to care more about their precious time then about encouraging people to make (legitimate) contributions unfortunately...
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    Transaction costs exist.
- Freak_NL 6y ago
  It's so trivial to cherry-pick or rebase and merge such a commit if you understand enough of git to use it properly with branches and stuff. If the commit message is suitably worded it saves time too. There are software projects out there, even highly used ones, that only use Github to mirror their SVN repository (or some other yesteryear source code system). For those maintainers these PRs do take up more time than they contribute though.
  - r-w 6y ago
    If they don't want GitHub PRs, they can just disable them.
    - cyphar 6y ago
      GitHub doesn't allow you to disable pull requests, despite many project (including notable ones like Linux) asking them to add this feature.
      - tn5421 6y ago
        They offer 3 options for doing so, in fact, in direct response to this controversy. I can limit interactions to non-new users. I can limit interactions to users that have contributed before. I can limit interactions to users that I have manually whitelisted in my repo. Unfortunately, only one of these can be active at a time, but the options do exist now. Go to your repo -> Settings -> Moderation Settings -> Interaction Limits
mcintyre1994 6y ago
This is the outcome that would really suck - if people making their first contribution a legitimate doc improvement get their PRs caught up and marked as spam by maintainers who understandably mistake it as part of the spam. I'm sure my first ever PR was adding an example to the docs for something, and if that had been closed with no response and labelled spam I doubt I'd have stayed around to contribute again.
rk06 6y ago
I have literally gotten 4 PRs in previous hacktoberfests with typo fix. I am internally debating if I should participate in this hacktoberfests given the spams going on
908B64B197 6y ago
Or be bolder: write an up to date "Getting Started" Guide! Or the actual (for the current version) build instructions for the platform you are on! A lot of projects have simply no easy guide to get from a git pull to a working build for someone not familiar with the language or build system used.

by fergie 6y ago

jlgaddis 6y ago

Sure, but those types of PRs aren't what's happening here. Check out this PR: https://github.com/OscarZhou/CSharpTraining/pull/1/commits/8e3600fcd5dca8f9f0d16d56237299d893f1aaf6 https://github.com/OscarZhou/CSharpTraining/pull/1/commits/8... How would you like to receive dozens of PRs like that? You would absolutely consider that blatant spam.

oneeyedpigeon 6y ago
I think they're referring to one example on Twitter (unfortunately, I can't find it again now) which was calling out a legitimate single-character typo fix. As someone who occasionally likes to report typos, I appreciate someone telling us they're appreciated :)

cbanek 6y ago

I have done one letter typo fixes to doc repos as a 3rd party and felt great about them. One of them was actually a typo in a command line that I found by going through their instructions step by step copying and pasting each line. I was seriously confused when it didn't work!

dannyw 6y ago
Yes. Fixing up documentation is always helpful, even if it’s a one letter change! Now, updating “copyright 2018-2019” to “2020” isn’t.
- rjmunro 6y ago
  The point of the date it to tell people when the material was created. In some jurisdictions / situations, copyright expires N years after it was created, so that date tells people when copyright has expired. Unfortunately, in many cases now, copyright is based on the year the author died, rather than the year the work was created, which means it is much harder to work out if something has entered the public domain. Changing the date without changing the code significantly is arguably fraudulent.
  - noja 6y ago
    > Changing the date without changing the code significantly is arguably fraudulent. In some countries the publishing date is what counts, and they define publishing for websites as when the site was viewed.
    - Zarel 6y ago
      Presumably, even if publishing date is relevant, it's only first publication that's relevant. No work should stay copyrighted forever just because it's constantly being republished.
      - noja 6y ago
        > it's only first publication that's relevant. No, the publishing date is relevant (not the first publishing date).
  - schwartzworld 6y ago
    doesn't moving the creation date forward in time make you vulnerable? if you create some content in 2018 and I rip it off in 2019 and then you update your copyright to 2020, what's to stop me from saying I came up with it first?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

watwut 6y ago

The pull request I have seen were changing "how to install" into "how to easily install" and such. They were not fixing typos or even making sentences better. They were just meaningless changes.

dilyevsky 6y ago
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
- watwut 6y ago
  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.
  - pferde 6y ago
    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. :)
    - Freak_NL 6y ago
      As a drive-by contributor to plenty of projects it raises the bar uncomfortably high though. A PR I can rebase and rework based on feedback that can be given right there on the line of code it pertains to. Easy as pie with GitLab or GitHub. Really bothersome with mailing-lists, and excruciatingly painful if they don't even use a modern DVCS like git.

AmIDev 6y ago

One of the PR I made for hacktoberfest was fixing typo in a command in a doc. In the current case however, it seems people are not even trying to do something trivially useful.

mcv 6y ago

Typo fixes are useful. Adding '- an Amazing Project' to a title is not. There's a lot that the guy could have done differently to demonstrate what a legitimate pull request looks like. Because this wasn't it.

dathinab 6y ago

I love it if people send me PR fixing typos or improving documentation. The problem a lot of the hacktober fest PR don't do any of that. E.g. on the rust repo some one added a bunch of PRs which add "### The best" to some readmes.

_wolfie_ 6y ago

On the other hand, I was told by boost project that my one line fix for a typo was "waste of maintainer time", so it seems to vary on per-project basis :)

rob74 6y ago
Yeah, some maintainers are friendlier then others, and some seem to care more about their precious time then about encouraging people to make (legitimate) contributions unfortunately...
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Transaction costs exist.
Freak_NL 6y ago
It's so trivial to cherry-pick or rebase and merge such a commit if you understand enough of git to use it properly with branches and stuff. If the commit message is suitably worded it saves time too. There are software projects out there, even highly used ones, that only use Github to mirror their SVN repository (or some other yesteryear source code system). For those maintainers these PRs do take up more time than they contribute though.
- r-w 6y ago
  If they don't want GitHub PRs, they can just disable them.
  - cyphar 6y ago
    GitHub doesn't allow you to disable pull requests, despite many project (including notable ones like Linux) asking them to add this feature.
    - tn5421 6y ago
      They offer 3 options for doing so, in fact, in direct response to this controversy. I can limit interactions to non-new users. I can limit interactions to users that have contributed before. I can limit interactions to users that I have manually whitelisted in my repo. Unfortunately, only one of these can be active at a time, but the options do exist now. Go to your repo -> Settings -> Moderation Settings -> Interaction Limits

mcintyre1994 6y ago

This is the outcome that would really suck - if people making their first contribution a legitimate doc improvement get their PRs caught up and marked as spam by maintainers who understandably mistake it as part of the spam. I'm sure my first ever PR was adding an example to the docs for something, and if that had been closed with no response and labelled spam I doubt I'd have stayed around to contribute again.

rk06 6y ago

I have literally gotten 4 PRs in previous hacktoberfests with typo fix. I am internally debating if I should participate in this hacktoberfests given the spams going on

908B64B197 6y ago

Or be bolder: write an up to date "Getting Started" Guide! Or the actual (for the current version) build instructions for the platform you are on! A lot of projects have simply no easy guide to get from a git pull to a working build for someone not familiar with the language or build system used.