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Discussion on: DigitalOcean's Hacktoberfest is Hurting Open Source

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leob profile image
leob • Edited

Playing the devil's advocate, but isn't Hacktoberfest sort of encouraging this? I remember I read an intro to Hacktoberfest (don't know if it was on dev.to or on the DO site) last year, where it was stated something like this:

"Daunting? No a PR can be VERY simple! It can just be ... (some extremely simple and trivial 'contribution...')" ......... kind of encouraging people to issue these trivial PR's :-)

If you really wanna contribute in a deep and meaningful way then it's probably not possible to craft 4 great and helpful PR's in your spare time within 4 weeks, just to score your hipster t-shirt ... I can imagine that maintainers aren't eagerly waiting for an avalanche of these low quality trivial PR's. Long-term and deep commitment is what they need!

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cipharius profile image
Valts Liepiņš

I agree, they should reduce trivial contribution encouragements, but focus on teaching how to spot and resolve simple issues.

From my experience, it's very possible to create 4 meaningful contributions within a month. Either by choosing a familiar project, or small enough project that is easy to set up and test. It all boils down to choosing the right projects to contribute to and issues to resolve.