I see a lot of complaints about "README changes" again and I just want to add a few thoughts there. If you have some sort of triage process (either as an indiv

I see a lot of complaints about "README changes" again and I just want to add a few thoughts there. If you have some sort of triage process (either as an individual or as a team) then closing or merging even a dozen of these "README changes" should not be a huge time sink. I understand you are annoyed, but also, just deal with it. It literally takes less time to hit Close or Merge than to write long postings here or on Twitter claiming that this is destroying open source. It isn't. I am going further and will say that toxic reactions to contributors (even if they are "annoying" or "spam") are destroying open source culture. In the past at $LASTJOB I always made sure we participated in Hacktoberfest for our mobile products. From my perspective it has always been a success. We have always had spam submissions (which are easily triaged away) but those have also always offset by great contributions. Many people submitted their first meaningful code change through Hacktoberfest, which as a result made the lives of millions of users better. That. Is. Fantastic. This did not happen by just putting a #hacktoberfest tag on a repo. Instead we planned, prepared and organized. We accepted the fact that there would be some spam to deal with. We found old good first-bug issues and filed new ones. And most importantly we approached this not from a "free work!" perspective, but simply as a way to get people involved in open source. Because we care about open source and people. Not even with the expectation that they stick around. Hacktoberfest is not about you, it is about giving others an opportunity to contribute.