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:wave: Hi, some of y'all may remember me from previous years -- I work on the engineering (and social/support to some extent) of Hacktoberfest. As a few commen

:wave: Hi, some of y'all may remember me from previous years -- I work on the engineering (and social/support to some extent) of Hacktoberfest. As a few commenters have noted, Hacktoberfest has had spam problems in the past, mostly due to folks chasing a free t-shirt without thinking about what they're actually doing to achieve that. I'm super sorry about that, it's not what we want this program to be. In response to the massive spam wave we saw in 2020 with the program, we made some substantial changes to the rules for Hacktoberfest (during the 2020 event, and since) to help reduce the level of spam: - Hacktoberfest is opt-in for maintainers. They need to add the "hacktoberfest" topic to their repos. - Contributors are only rewarded for PR/MRs that maintainers accept. Merging, overall approving review, or the "hacktoberfest-accepted" label count. - Contributors that have two or more PR/MRs identified as spam (either via our automated logic, or maintainers labeling a PR/MR as "spam") will be disqualified permanently. As always, we're open to feedback on what more folks think could be done to avoid spam with the program, while still keeping it accessible to new folks that want to contribute to open source. hacktoberfest at digitalocean dot com is the place to send that feedback <3

dom96 4y ago
Since most of the comments here have a negative sentiment I just want to say as both a participant and an open source maintainer: I love what you're doing! I am excited to contribute to awesome projects and add another t-shirt to my collection plus can't wait to see contributions from others to my projects!
- fknorangesite 4y ago
  > Since most of the comments here have a negative sentiment Only the ones that are working off years-old information.
  - mmegger 4y ago
    Exactly. I find it amazing how many people are willing to keep bashing something that they haven't taken the time to look into in the past two years.
    - dpkirchner 4y ago
      First impressions are important. We rely on them to filter out a lot of information and reduce options when making decisions. For example, a bad first impression will result in no second-round interview, no first or second date, a lost sales opportunity. I don't think it's unfair to extend that to events such as this. Especially because it's still ultimately a tool to promote Digitalocean services. If it were up to me, I think I'd modify the site title and social media card data to properly reflect that they've made changes to reduce the negative impact of their promotion on the public. "Hacktoberfest 2022: Lessons Learned Edition" or something slightly tongue-in-cheek and self-effacing. The way it is presented now makes it look like it'll be more of the same.
      - fknorangesite 4y ago
        > First impressions are important. Hacktoberfest had been around for several years by the time the spam suddenly became an issue in 2020. > Hacktoberfest 2022: Lessons Learned Edition They basically did do this, except that it was 2020 and 2021. How long does the penance have to last?
pmarreck 4y ago
Just had to say, very attractive website!
tommica 4y ago
Thanks for doing this!
funcSoulBrother 4y ago
Congratulations Matt (and @Logan_Liffick, @xamthorz). What a huge improvement over last year's design and site. Good luck with the program, may your service states be predictable and efficient. I'll be participating this year for the first time as a maintainer rather than as shadow hand :D
robbles 4y ago
These sound like very positive changes! Would you consider going through past years and pre-emptively disqualifying people for their previous spam PRs as well? And is it obvious on the website to someone when they're disqualified? Or do they just not get a reward?
- MattIPv4 4y ago
  We don't have easily accessible data on previous years' contributions (we'd have to scrape GitHub again for it all), and I'm not sure disqualifying folks based on historical contributions would be overly fair as they didn't agree to that back then. Disqualification was rule last year though, and those that were disqualified last year will still be disqualified this year. I'm not sure if there was any obvious messaging last year when someone was disqualified, other than not getting a reward, but this year will definitely show dedicated messaging for those users (working on this profile state as I write this).

dom96 4y ago

Since most of the comments here have a negative sentiment I just want to say as both a participant and an open source maintainer: I love what you're doing! I am excited to contribute to awesome projects and add another t-shirt to my collection plus can't wait to see contributions from others to my projects!

fknorangesite 4y ago
> Since most of the comments here have a negative sentiment Only the ones that are working off years-old information.
- mmegger 4y ago
  Exactly. I find it amazing how many people are willing to keep bashing something that they haven't taken the time to look into in the past two years.
  - dpkirchner 4y ago
    First impressions are important. We rely on them to filter out a lot of information and reduce options when making decisions. For example, a bad first impression will result in no second-round interview, no first or second date, a lost sales opportunity. I don't think it's unfair to extend that to events such as this. Especially because it's still ultimately a tool to promote Digitalocean services. If it were up to me, I think I'd modify the site title and social media card data to properly reflect that they've made changes to reduce the negative impact of their promotion on the public. "Hacktoberfest 2022: Lessons Learned Edition" or something slightly tongue-in-cheek and self-effacing. The way it is presented now makes it look like it'll be more of the same.
    - fknorangesite 4y ago
      > First impressions are important. Hacktoberfest had been around for several years by the time the spam suddenly became an issue in 2020. > Hacktoberfest 2022: Lessons Learned Edition They basically did do this, except that it was 2020 and 2021. How long does the penance have to last?

pmarreck 4y ago

Just had to say, very attractive website!

tommica 4y ago

Thanks for doing this!

funcSoulBrother 4y ago

Congratulations Matt (and @Logan_Liffick, @xamthorz). What a huge improvement over last year's design and site. Good luck with the program, may your service states be predictable and efficient. I'll be participating this year for the first time as a maintainer rather than as shadow hand :D

robbles 4y ago

These sound like very positive changes! Would you consider going through past years and pre-emptively disqualifying people for their previous spam PRs as well? And is it obvious on the website to someone when they're disqualified? Or do they just not get a reward?

MattIPv4 4y ago
We don't have easily accessible data on previous years' contributions (we'd have to scrape GitHub again for it all), and I'm not sure disqualifying folks based on historical contributions would be overly fair as they didn't agree to that back then. Disqualification was rule last year though, and those that were disqualified last year will still be disqualified this year. I'm not sure if there was any obvious messaging last year when someone was disqualified, other than not getting a reward, but this year will definitely show dedicated messaging for those users (working on this profile state as I write this).