6 ms·

Do you really have to ask "why"?

by dannyr 6y ago

Aeolun 6y ago
I do. It sounds really weird to me. The whole concept of pull requests is that anyone can make them.
- dannyr 6y ago
  Yes. Anybody should be able to make pull requests. But incentivizing people to make pull requests is a different matter.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - sofixa 6y ago
    How so? Incentivising people to help (via PR) is great. It's like incentivising people to donate blood or similar "everyone benefits" scenarios. (Yes, of course, blatant spam doesn't help anyone and is disgusting, I'm talking about in general)
    - mysterydip 6y ago
      The problem is people aren't incentivized to help, they're incentivized to get free stuff. So people who have no interest in helping are doing the bare minimum to get free stuff, which is a much larger number than the people actually wanting to help. In your scenario, it would be like incentvizing "donating a vial" and hoping it will be filled with blood, but 99% of people are donating an empty vial.
    - _AzMoo 6y ago
      Are you unfamiliar with the problems this has caused?
    - rcfox 6y ago
      People who donate blood are pre-screened to ensure their contribution won't be harmful.
    - lovegoblin 6y ago
      Have you been following the events of this year's Hacktoberfest?
  - account42 6y ago
    Should companies ask for permissions before they employ someone to send pull requests to public repos? I think the problem was not as much incentivizing pull requests but incentivizing low effort pull requests and outright spam.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  "Anyone" does not scale infinitely: it only specifies who might participate, not how many can. Each project will collapse — lose work for one day or more — under a certain sheer quantity burden of pull requests. When people say "anyone can", they don't always mean "everyone do so all at the same time", as happened here. The term "anyone" makes no statement about the frequency of pull requests, and everyone is generally upset about the frequency of pull requests associated with a third party action (Hacktober). Rightfully so: their time is being wasted and their expectations of reasonable behavior are being violated.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    I find it hard to consider a flood of pull requests ‘wasting my time’. Don’t look at them. It’s not as if you’re obliged to do anything with them.
    - floatingatoll 6y ago
      Others have a different experience than yours, that is both negative and not improved by the “ignore them” process that works for you. I encourage overcoming the difficulty you describe.
artonge 6y ago
I would argue that having your repository on github is a strong way to say "feel free to contribute". Not saying spam is OK, just that having to ask repo maintainers their authorisation seems superfluous.
- watwut 6y ago
  Feel free to "contribute and get nothing" is completely different then "contribute get tshirt". The people who participate are different and pull requests are different.
  - sofixa 6y ago
    How are they different as long as they are not spam? Good contributions are good contributions and help, regardless if there's a crappy t-shirt or not in exchange for them
    - jpindar 6y ago
      You're clearly not aware of what's been happening the past few days. It's not good contributions or help.
    - curryst 6y ago
      It's the incentive structure. It's effectively Goodhart's Law in action: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. In this case, the measure is "number of pull requests", and the result of making it a measure is that people created an insane number of PRs that simply adjusted white space in a README or slightly reworded phrases but kept the exact same meaning. Because they wanted the T shirt, because they felt that it validated them as a developer (ignoring that good contributions would have been a much better validation).

Do you really have to ask "why"?

by dannyr 6y ago

Do you really have to ask "why"?

Aeolun 6y ago

I do. It sounds really weird to me. The whole concept of pull requests is that anyone can make them.

dannyr 6y ago
Yes. Anybody should be able to make pull requests. But incentivizing people to make pull requests is a different matter.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sofixa 6y ago
  How so? Incentivising people to help (via PR) is great. It's like incentivising people to donate blood or similar "everyone benefits" scenarios. (Yes, of course, blatant spam doesn't help anyone and is disgusting, I'm talking about in general)
  - mysterydip 6y ago
    The problem is people aren't incentivized to help, they're incentivized to get free stuff. So people who have no interest in helping are doing the bare minimum to get free stuff, which is a much larger number than the people actually wanting to help. In your scenario, it would be like incentvizing "donating a vial" and hoping it will be filled with blood, but 99% of people are donating an empty vial.
  - _AzMoo 6y ago
    Are you unfamiliar with the problems this has caused?
  - rcfox 6y ago
    People who donate blood are pre-screened to ensure their contribution won't be harmful.
  - lovegoblin 6y ago
    Have you been following the events of this year's Hacktoberfest?
- account42 6y ago
  Should companies ask for permissions before they employ someone to send pull requests to public repos? I think the problem was not as much incentivizing pull requests but incentivizing low effort pull requests and outright spam.
floatingatoll 6y ago
"Anyone" does not scale infinitely: it only specifies who might participate, not how many can. Each project will collapse — lose work for one day or more — under a certain sheer quantity burden of pull requests. When people say "anyone can", they don't always mean "everyone do so all at the same time", as happened here. The term "anyone" makes no statement about the frequency of pull requests, and everyone is generally upset about the frequency of pull requests associated with a third party action (Hacktober). Rightfully so: their time is being wasted and their expectations of reasonable behavior are being violated.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  I find it hard to consider a flood of pull requests ‘wasting my time’. Don’t look at them. It’s not as if you’re obliged to do anything with them.
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    Others have a different experience than yours, that is both negative and not improved by the “ignore them” process that works for you. I encourage overcoming the difficulty you describe.

artonge 6y ago

I would argue that having your repository on github is a strong way to say "feel free to contribute". Not saying spam is OK, just that having to ask repo maintainers their authorisation seems superfluous.

watwut 6y ago
Feel free to "contribute and get nothing" is completely different then "contribute get tshirt". The people who participate are different and pull requests are different.
- sofixa 6y ago
  How are they different as long as they are not spam? Good contributions are good contributions and help, regardless if there's a crappy t-shirt or not in exchange for them
  - jpindar 6y ago
    You're clearly not aware of what's been happening the past few days. It's not good contributions or help.
  - curryst 6y ago
    It's the incentive structure. It's effectively Goodhart's Law in action: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. In this case, the measure is "number of pull requests", and the result of making it a measure is that people created an insane number of PRs that simply adjusted white space in a README or slightly reworded phrases but kept the exact same meaning. Because they wanted the T shirt, because they felt that it validated them as a developer (ignoring that good contributions would have been a much better validation).