Hey all, it is that time of the year again. Hacktoberfest has started and i wanted to know if there is a chance for nixpkgs to opt-in to the hacktoberfest just like last year. As always i have a couple of changes in my local repo and for me i see it as is a chance to actually find the motivation to push them upstream.
Cheers!
Even though I understand this, I’m rather skeptical about it: we already have a crowded PR queue and I’m not sure if we want to deal with spam (which happened in the past already) on top of that.
If i remember correctly last year, spam was not so much of an issue due to increased scrutiny by DigitalOcean.
For this year a three strikes rule is in place: Have two PRs marked as Spam and you are out of the event.
- Logr
+ Logr - An Amazing Project
Not sure what you are implying but as i wrote before, spam should be somewhat restricted due to the three-strikes rule by DigitalOcean.
It’d be interesting if somehow the hacktoberfest flow could be redirected to following up on PRs with the purpose of getting them closed or merged instead of adding new ones but I guess that’s not possible…
We do have a serious backlog of PRs and the quality of hacktoberfest PRs tend to be lower than average, so from the purpose of “get things done”, we probably don’t gain much. But we might be able to attract new people (assuming we don’t screw up the review process too badly) which is far more interesting. For that reason alone, I think we should opt-in.
I’m of the opinion nixpkgs should, we already get some questionable spam, and I think the benefit for enticing new contributors out weighs the potential issue of maintainer burden-ship
nixpkgs is a pretty massive project so more help can’t hurt 
. In my experience, the openness of its development makes it so much more inviting and enjoyable to contribute to.
Having a streamlined process for simple and newbie PRs and also spam/offtopic stuff is probably a good idea anyway outside of Hacktoberfest.
Perhaps we could setup more GitHub labels to let a larger pool of contributes assist in the review process? They could filter out bad PRs, do a general sanity check, and can provide feedback to new users.
Actually with the hacktoberfest this year the “maintainers” are also incentivized to review and merge PRs. Perform 4 such actions and you are also eligible for a nice T-Shirt
Edit: Link to the Info: Hacktoberfest 2021
We’re more than half-way through October now so we probably should get a move on.
Unless anyone objects strongly, I’ll add the label to the repository tonight.
Great, turns out that I do not have sufficient permissions to do that. I’ll open an issue and ping someone who does.
And we’re rolling! As mentioned by @makefu, maintainers get to take part too so let’s get reviewing!
I’ve made a note to properly prepare for this next year. I think it’s a bit of a missed opportunity not to have used this to drum up some attention.
Please remember to keep the label for some time after Hacktoberfest has ended. Last year the label was deleted immediately once November came around and many PRs hadn’t passed the wait period required by Hacktoberfest, so a lot of people that would have earned their shirt through nixpkgs were suddenly left out, see here: Hacktoberfest 2020 - #6 by braunse