Looking at the homepage[1] for Hacktoberfest this year, the organizers do appear to try to lead people towards projects that are looking for help.
It's possible that differences in the way the event is announced and explained may lead to different expectations and results.
And sure, some people are just going to spam, especially if there are incentives involved. Looking at a few of the pull requests linked in the post, some of them definitely are of questionable contribution value.
An ideal outcome should likely still incentivize participation: for some folks, this may be their first time contributing to open source at all, and there's a non-zero chance that could lead to massive learning opportunities for them, and future contributions to open source projects -- but yes, maintainer burden is a real problem to balance against too.
Providing opt-in/out for repositories is certainly one possible approach. What other techniques are available to manage large quantities of inbound communication and filter signal/noise?
It's possible that differences in the way the event is announced and explained may lead to different expectations and results.
And sure, some people are just going to spam, especially if there are incentives involved. Looking at a few of the pull requests linked in the post, some of them definitely are of questionable contribution value.
An ideal outcome should likely still incentivize participation: for some folks, this may be their first time contributing to open source at all, and there's a non-zero chance that could lead to massive learning opportunities for them, and future contributions to open source projects -- but yes, maintainer burden is a real problem to balance against too.
Providing opt-in/out for repositories is certainly one possible approach. What other techniques are available to manage large quantities of inbound communication and filter signal/noise?
[1] - https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/