When you measure something (e.g. the linked-to "Most active GitHub users by contributions"), and others use it as an incentive (e.g. employers granting intervie

When you measure something (e.g. the linked-to "Most active GitHub users by contributions"), and others use it as an incentive (e.g. employers granting interviews) , some people will game the ranking. Here... top 256 users by contributions contributions = Pull Requests + opened issues + commits filtered by > 218 followers To get and stay on this particular list, you need 240 (= 218 + 10% contingency) followers, which you get by following other projects, not because you're interested in them but because their project members look like they treat following as a favor and reciprocate. Regarding contributions, which is easiest: making a pull request (which don't need to be accepted), committing code, or opening an issue (which don't need to be closed)? Choose the easiest one, ignore the other two. Then pack as little as possible into every request/issue/commit, creating as many as possible. There's people out there who do game Github rankings (tho not necessarily this one). It's like quantum physics: whenever you measure something, the thing being measured changes.