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> https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/details#quality https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/details#quality The quality standards are so low, I am honestly

> https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/details#quality https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/details#quality The quality standards are so low, I am honestly not surprised by the amount of spam this has generated. > Last but not least, one pull request to fix a typo is fine, but 5 pull requests to remove a stray whitespace is not. https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/details#spam https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/details#spam And to make matters worse, the onus falls on the maintainer to mark a PR as spam. This honestly feels like a DDoS attack on open-source rather than promoting open-source. I don't think there's any way to save this. EDIT: I think DigitalOcean completely missed the point on promoting open-source. It's not about the PRs. It's about everything that goes before you submit your first PR. Reading mailing lists. Actively participating in discussions with the maintainers. Reading the docs. It seems like they wanted an easy way out to promote their brand without putting in the effort to review the PRs and filtering out spam by raising the bar on what qualifies for a PR (i.e. not requiring all the leg-work for writing your first PR).

raverbashing 6y ago
Does GitHub allow an user to be marked as a spammer?
- google234123 6y ago
  All the users called on the r/programming thread about this were banned by github.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    What does "called" mean here? Called out for spamming?
- aloknnikhil 6y ago
  I think this is the closest thing you can do https://docs.github.com/en/github/building-a-strong-community/blocking-a-user-from-your-personal-account https://docs.github.com/en/github/building-a-strong-communit... https://docs.github.com/en/github/building-a-strong-community/blocking-a-user-from-your-organization https://docs.github.com/en/github/building-a-strong-communit... But that still means maintainers have to build an active list of blocked users. That's definitely not scalable.
- asicsp 6y ago
  Yes, I remember reporting a user some years back (not related to hacktoberfest) - the PR I got looked good until I looked up their account and found too many PRs (some of which didn't make a sense to the repo it was submitted) along with a link to their product. GitHub took action, said it was indeed spammy and thanked for reporting.
  - Karliss 6y ago
    First time hearing about GitHub not ignoring a spam report. Me and other maintainers of a project have reported a dozen users making obvious junk PR and issues containing few random words and all other activity similar random junk. GitHub did nothing, no response beside automatically generated one, spam accounts still there. The spam came in waves 3-6 within an hour, with only option temporary block all external contributions from non team members. After getting temporary blocked the spam reapers few months later. I assume that's some kind of fake account farming.
    - asicsp 6y ago
      May be things have changed now that GitHub is much bigger than it was few years back? Account farming and/or whatever else, this will be ever changing cat and mouse chase. Which means plenty of custom settings and rules and stuff, making it difficult for genuine contributors.
enchiridion 6y ago
They would open it up to maintainers to reward outstanding contributes.
riffraff 6y ago
I feel you're being too negative towards DO. Yes, there is a lot more than writing a random PR to FLOSS, but getting people involved in that is still a positive thing overall. To me it _is_ surprising that people would create spam PRs to get a t-shirt. Anyway, it seems like adding their own layer of pre-filtering would have been the best solution.
- aloknnikhil 6y ago
  > I feel you're being too negative towards DO. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying DO is a terrible brand. I am just saying this was not very well thought out for such a wide reaching event. It just makes me question their motivation.
  - addicted 6y ago
    It worked very well for many years. I’m not sure it’s as badly thought as you are suggesting it is. More like someone found a way to game it and promoted the crap out of gaming it (we even know who the someone and their videos are!).
- pininja 6y ago
  I am surprised too. Reputation is important in OSS and when applying to jobs (which I assume some would want to do, or already have). I would raise an eyebrow a bit if I were reviewing a candidate and found all of their PRs on GitHub were spam.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    90% of people who apply for a programming job have no chance of getting it. These are the people who are spamming repos, not the 10% with any budding talent.
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      The harsh truth is that 99% of these spammers couldn't complete a simple take-home assignment. [0] [0] https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/ https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/
strken 6y ago
> It's not about the PRs. It's about everything that goes before you submit your first PR. Reading mailing lists. Actively participating in discussions with the maintainers. Reading the docs. I've only had 5 or so PRs accepted[0], and all of them have been tiny bugfixes for broken tools. I have no goddamned idea how to get an actual feature merged, because maintainers never comment on the proof-of-concept PRs I put up, even if they have tests and documentation updates. Maybe it's all about mailing lists and out-of-band communication. [0] not for Hacktober, just in general
- mook 6y ago
  Unsolicited advice, please feel free to ignore; hopefully you'll be okay with it: Bug fixes tend to not need justification (since the maintainers presumably already agreed), but new features depend on the maintainers agreeing that they want it in the project. Before making the PR, try to find the relevant issue (or create one if it doesn't already exist), and get the maintainer to indicate that they want the feature. Once they've written that down, they're primed to accept it because they'd feel worse about not processing the thing they already committed to.
- watwut 6y ago
  Reality is that giving you such feedback on proof of concept work takes effort, time and is work. As such maintenence needs reason to spend time with it. Do unless you see them engage with past pull requests like that, assume they don't.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  It's fine. Your fork repo has your new feature, and people can use your fork if they want the feature.
Vinnl 6y ago
I've made a bunch of PRs to projects that I happened to use but encountered bugs in. Likewise, I've received similar PRs (and issue reports). I believe that all those were valuable even though they did not involve close participation in the project. But I have not always done that: only after learning how low the barrier to entry was by doing it the first few times, does the thought of submitting a PR now arrive automatically when I encounter such a situation.

raverbashing 6y ago

Does GitHub allow an user to be marked as a spammer?

google234123 6y ago
All the users called on the r/programming thread about this were banned by github.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  What does "called" mean here? Called out for spamming?
aloknnikhil 6y ago
I think this is the closest thing you can do https://docs.github.com/en/github/building-a-strong-community/blocking-a-user-from-your-personal-account https://docs.github.com/en/github/building-a-strong-communit... https://docs.github.com/en/github/building-a-strong-community/blocking-a-user-from-your-organization https://docs.github.com/en/github/building-a-strong-communit... But that still means maintainers have to build an active list of blocked users. That's definitely not scalable.
asicsp 6y ago
Yes, I remember reporting a user some years back (not related to hacktoberfest) - the PR I got looked good until I looked up their account and found too many PRs (some of which didn't make a sense to the repo it was submitted) along with a link to their product. GitHub took action, said it was indeed spammy and thanked for reporting.
- Karliss 6y ago
  First time hearing about GitHub not ignoring a spam report. Me and other maintainers of a project have reported a dozen users making obvious junk PR and issues containing few random words and all other activity similar random junk. GitHub did nothing, no response beside automatically generated one, spam accounts still there. The spam came in waves 3-6 within an hour, with only option temporary block all external contributions from non team members. After getting temporary blocked the spam reapers few months later. I assume that's some kind of fake account farming.
  - asicsp 6y ago
    May be things have changed now that GitHub is much bigger than it was few years back? Account farming and/or whatever else, this will be ever changing cat and mouse chase. Which means plenty of custom settings and rules and stuff, making it difficult for genuine contributors.

enchiridion 6y ago

They would open it up to maintainers to reward outstanding contributes.

riffraff 6y ago

I feel you're being too negative towards DO. Yes, there is a lot more than writing a random PR to FLOSS, but getting people involved in that is still a positive thing overall. To me it _is_ surprising that people would create spam PRs to get a t-shirt. Anyway, it seems like adding their own layer of pre-filtering would have been the best solution.

aloknnikhil 6y ago
> I feel you're being too negative towards DO. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying DO is a terrible brand. I am just saying this was not very well thought out for such a wide reaching event. It just makes me question their motivation.
- addicted 6y ago
  It worked very well for many years. I’m not sure it’s as badly thought as you are suggesting it is. More like someone found a way to game it and promoted the crap out of gaming it (we even know who the someone and their videos are!).
pininja 6y ago
I am surprised too. Reputation is important in OSS and when applying to jobs (which I assume some would want to do, or already have). I would raise an eyebrow a bit if I were reviewing a candidate and found all of their PRs on GitHub were spam.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  90% of people who apply for a programming job have no chance of getting it. These are the people who are spamming repos, not the 10% with any budding talent.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    The harsh truth is that 99% of these spammers couldn't complete a simple take-home assignment. [0] [0] https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/ https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/

strken 6y ago

> It's not about the PRs. It's about everything that goes before you submit your first PR. Reading mailing lists. Actively participating in discussions with the maintainers. Reading the docs. I've only had 5 or so PRs accepted[0], and all of them have been tiny bugfixes for broken tools. I have no goddamned idea how to get an actual feature merged, because maintainers never comment on the proof-of-concept PRs I put up, even if they have tests and documentation updates. Maybe it's all about mailing lists and out-of-band communication. [0] not for Hacktober, just in general

mook 6y ago
Unsolicited advice, please feel free to ignore; hopefully you'll be okay with it: Bug fixes tend to not need justification (since the maintainers presumably already agreed), but new features depend on the maintainers agreeing that they want it in the project. Before making the PR, try to find the relevant issue (or create one if it doesn't already exist), and get the maintainer to indicate that they want the feature. Once they've written that down, they're primed to accept it because they'd feel worse about not processing the thing they already committed to.
watwut 6y ago
Reality is that giving you such feedback on proof of concept work takes effort, time and is work. As such maintenence needs reason to spend time with it. Do unless you see them engage with past pull requests like that, assume they don't.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
It's fine. Your fork repo has your new feature, and people can use your fork if they want the feature.

Vinnl 6y ago

I've made a bunch of PRs to projects that I happened to use but encountered bugs in. Likewise, I've received similar PRs (and issue reports). I believe that all those were valuable even though they did not involve close participation in the project. But I have not always done that: only after learning how low the barrier to entry was by doing it the first few times, does the thought of submitting a PR now arrive automatically when I encounter such a situation.