[bartread]

I get where you're coming from but I think you're missing the point. The issue seems to be that even if there are good contributions coming in their benefit is disproportionately outweighed by the work and disruption caused by the large volume of spammy PR submissions.

[paxys]

As an open source maintainer, I'd gladly sift through a mountain of spammy PRs (heck closing 4 per hour, as called out in the article, is almost zero trouble), if it means even a handful of real significant progress and issues fixed and potential future maintainers.

[hcho3]

+1. I feel the same way. If one out of 20 drive-by contributors stick around and become regular, that would be a real win for me. (I'm currently maintaining a project with 20k GitHub stars and we have four regular contributors.)

[pseudalopex]

That's a big if.

[paxys]

Well this thing has been running for a few years now so I'm sure someone has that data

[mundo]

https://github.com/MattIPv4/hacktoberfest-data

[paxys]

A snapshot of one year's participation in that specific period isn't too relevant to what we are discussing, because it doesn't track sustained future contributions by those same users.

[justinclift]

That's a good point. Wonder if they're be open to adding something like that...?

Maybe suggest that in an issue on that stats tracking repo?

[mundo]

I'm not missing that point, I'm asking whether it's true. The right way to answer that would probably be to find out how many of the new submitters from previous years went on to continue to become valuable contributors.