I wanted to share a brief update about Hacktoberfest.
This year, freeCodeCamp will not be participating in Hacktoberfest. This means any pull requests you make will not count toward their requirements for swag.
Historically, Hacktoberfest has been a great initiative to inspire new developers to get involved in open source. However, with that initiative came an influx of low-effort spam pull requests from folks looking to speedrun some swag. Unfortunately, this creates a lot of noise that negatively impacts our community. Maintainers become overburdened by triaging and reviewing the spam, which pulls us away from the legitimate contributions that you all make.
With the decision to bring back the T-shirt as part of the Hacktoberfest swag, I am concerned that this will further incentivise the spam. As such, I have chosen not to opt us in for the event this year. Instead, if you are interested in contributing I encourage you to look at first timers only and help wanted issues for opportunities to dip your toe in the pool. OR, if you are like Naomi and dive right in off the deep end, I have plenty of work coming up for the full stack certification.
Drop me a ping in our Discord community if you want to get involved with that!
It’s completely understandable given the challenges with spam submissions in past years. I appreciate the focus on maintaining quality contributions and encouraging genuine participation. I’ll definitely check out the first timers only and help wanted issues to continue contributing meaningfully.
