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> That said, I'm not sure this year can be salvaged. It's not clear whether all the existing spammers will get the message. I think the biggest problem DO will
by josteink 6y ago
> That said, I'm not sure this year can be salvaged. It's not clear whether all the existing spammers will get the message.
I think the biggest problem DO will have to address somehow is that Hacktoberfest now has become such a big event that they are getting attendees which they strictly speaking do not want to have, and the liberal “everything is open for everyone”-approach is now too open for the “game” to work.
Finding a way to encourage (new) people to contribute to open-source projects while at the same time keeping the bad people out (opportunists, spammers, etc) is not going to be easy. Locking things down (like only opt-in repos count) will severely limit genuine contributions way beyond just spam.
Whatever they end up doing, I suspect we will see Hacktoberfest 2019 as peak Hacktoberfest and from now on the event will be a mere shadow of what it used to be.
- pbronez 6y ago> Finding a way to encourage (new) people to contribute to open-source projects while at the same time keeping the bad people out (opportunists, spammers, etc) This is the challenge of our time, TBH. From the Eternal September onwards we’ve struggled to sustain community quality in the face of infinite connectivity. You start open & welcoming, but eventually you get overwhelmed with new folks and you can’t socialize them fast enough to preserve what was attractive about your community in the first place. This is the work of institution building. It’s not easy. The best examples I’ve seen are HN, Lobste.rs and some focused subreddits. All of these have strong mod teams and spam controls.