What’s wrong with Hacktoberfest

Cheuk Ting Ho

https://cheuk.dev

What do you think of Hacktoberfest?

source: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/

When it started...

Started 2014
~700 participants
Rules are simple - The honor system
Get a T-shirt

source: @kevashcraft on Twitter

It gets popular...

169,886 people signed up (2022)
GitHub or GitLab PR tracking
Rules are more complicated: opt-in rule
Tee or Tree

source: @tannerdolby on Twitter

Ideally, it's good, isn't it?

In theory, it could...

Draw awareness to the open-source ecosystem
Promote contribution to open-source
Everyone is welcome to contribute
Exploring new open-source projects
Gamification - it's fun

But, things take a down turn...

Stats in 2022...

621,104 pull requests were made
166,057 pull requests were merged
1,043 pull requests were approved
102,231 pull requests were labeled hacktoberfest-accepted

there were 34,595 pull requests not accepted by a maintainer
and 9,598 labeled as spam or invalid

Spammy PRs

Meanless changes - usually in the docs
e.g. adding punctuation to the doc
Some of them even said in the comment they want a free T-shirt 🤦‍♀️

source: @ilopmar on Twitter

Maintainers are angry

"It's a DDoS attack to open-source"

How the organiser reacts...

Asked maintainers to mark spammy PRs
Projects have to opt-in from the year after
More complicated participation rules

We’ve traced the majority of this year’s spammy contributions back to a participant with a large online audience who openly encouraged their community to take part in spammy activities, including ideas on how to game the system. However, we know the spam issues go beyond this one example.

But that won't solve the problem completely...

What can be learnt...

Gamification may not be the best way to encourage contribution
The quality of contribution is hard to measure
Quantity is not everything
Swags may not be the best rewards to give out

How to encourage contribution...

Contribution mentorship program
Workshops to teach new contributions (Sprints)
Encourage positive attitudes towards contributing to open-source projects (benefit is not getting swags)
Work with maintainers to listen to their opinions and gain their trusts