How Hacktoberfest 2020 ruined the open source UX Writing contributors

Posted on Oct 26, 2020

hacktoberfest-2020-spam

Every October, Digital Ocean and GitHub give out free swags to people in return for their contributions to open source. This motivated a lot of first-time contributors. A simple and noble idea.

But this year, a lot of people started making changes to the code which serves no purpose but to get the free t-shirt. For example, adding a space that wasn’t fixing a typo or incorrect grammar.

So, when project maintainers saw my changes along with the other so-called fixes they believed I was spamming them. I cannot blame the project maintainers. They are receiving hundreds of such useless requests.

I had to explain and convince them by referring to my past contributions.

One such instance is when I noticed an inconsistent use of ‘Log in’ at different places. So, I changed it all to “Log in.” The next day, I was called a spammer.

Another instance is where I removed the word “successfully” from snack bar messages to reduce tautology. Again, I was called a spammer.

If a seasoned contributor like me can have a hard time then I cannot comprehend what first-time contributors would or had to go through.

UX Writers are not coders. When I made my first contribution, it was overwhelming. But I was fortunate enough to have developer friends who helped me through it. But first-time contributors may not be lucky.

They may not understand how GitHub works. With all these spammers nobody has time to help them.

What started as a noble idea has now reduced to freebie hoarding and spamming event.