October was an extraordinary month for Quote.Vote.
Hacktoberfest gave us the spark we needed to open the doors, welcoming contributors from around the world to help shape the future of a platform that treats communication itself as public infrastructure.
Our Hacktoberfest Roadmap board became a living snapshot of what collaboration looks like in motion. Every issue told a story. Some of features that shipped cleanly across the finish line, others of ambitious starts, half-built prototypes, deep reviews, and hard lessons learned.
Why People Chose Quote.Vote
When we asked contributors why they picked our project over thousands of others, the answer kept coming back to the mission.
“It felt like the work mattered.”
Quote.Vote treats conversation like civic infrastructure, not a commodity. No ads. No engagement algorithms. Just people, text, and respect. A chronological, transparent space for dialogue. That framing gave people a reason to care.
This was a resounding validation of our approach. I maintain Quote.Vote because I believe that improving how we communicate online is the first step necessary to solving the world’s biggest problems. This passion seems to have been found present in our contributors as well.
💡 Why Quote.Vote Exists
Our mission is to provide a platform for people to make their voice heard, and find consensus. We build tools that make respectful, evidence-based discussion easier, fairer, and more accessible. If we can elevate the quality of public dialogue, we can rebuild trust in institutions, reduce polarization, and make truth more discoverable.
Quote.Vote was born from frustration with how social media bends human dialogue toward outrage and profit. We asked a simple question... What if the internet were built for dialogue rather than sensationalism?
Our mission isn’t driven by growth hacking, or for ad revenue.
We’re building a space for public conversation the way you’d build a public library. Slowly, deliberately, and open for everyone.
Hacktoberfest was an invitation for the public to join our civic experiment, and it resonated with so many developers.
Every contributor who touched the codebase this month helped move us closer to a future where online conversation feels meaningful again and every name will be forever credited publicly for helping build this commons. We are so grateful.
⚙️ What We Worked On
This year’s Hacktoberfest wasn’t about hitting arbitrary numbers, we just wanted to get the codebase in the hands of the open source community. But what happened astounded us, as we ended up merging 31 pull requests!
We explored dark mode, geo-located quotes, and a rate-limiting system to protect the platform from spam.
We dove into SEO improvements, open graph metadata, and lazy loading to make Quote.Vote load faster and share better.
We revisited our mission page, improving accessibility and clarity of message.
We began modernizing the frontend with a Material-UI v7 upgrade, while refining internal structures for reputation scoring, search improvements, and invite-based onboarding.
Not every feature crossed the finish line — and that’s okay.
Some are still in review, some blocked, some parked for design iteration. But each conversation, pull request, and review strengthened the foundation we’re building on.
🧠 Lessons in Collaboration
As any maintainer knows, our most important effort is building the connective tissue that lets people work together. During Hacktoberfest, we learned that coordination is our greatest asset.
By the second week, as PRs piled up and feature branches multiplied, it became clear that coordination and mutual trust would matter more than commits. So we shifted focus from centralized velocity to cross-review.
Midway through the month, we reached out to the broader community for help reviewing code and cross-testing new features. That wave of support allowed us to clear our backlog, finalize merges, and finish strong. It proved that open collaboration when nurtured with clarity and trust scales better than any single contributor ever could.
The result was a team of contributors who had never met before working across time zones to support one another’s work. Through community outreach and open review threads, we found our rhythm and finished the month with a renewed sense of purpose and possibility.
❤️ Reflections and Gratitude
Hacktoberfest 2025 was a true milestone and turning point for our project.
This month proved that open-source software can be public service, that code reviews can be acts of empathy, and that even a comment on GitHub can move society toward greater understanding.
Most importantly, it demonstrated that open source can serve not only developers, but democracy itself.
To everyone who contributed, tested, debugged, or even asked a question, thank you!
The amazing developers who contributed:
OtavioXimarelli
DidiNDexter
olivermolina
CynthiaWahome
nur-hasin
Nayan-Kute21
gunjanghate
harshitaphadtare
TechnoBlogger14o3
Om7035
trickster026
motirebuma
Kaif-Imteyaz
Chitransh1011
JnsCas
shubham-01-star
Thank you!
Louis Girifalco
Founder, Quote.Vote
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