Hacktoberfest 2020

I usually use the Hacktoberfest to work on my static site generator but this year I will build an application that will connect to my smart home system (Homematic) to provide data storage (time series) and additional automation.

And yeah, I am cheating a bit and make PRs on my own stuff just to grab the shirt

I’m already fed up by the hacktoberfest… I really eagerly looked forward, both as contributor and as maintainer.

Though it took me 2 hours this morning to wade through PRs labelling them as “invalid” and report users as spammers…

Only to learn, that there is a cap of 70k shirts this year.

Last year those spam PRs have been equally spread over the month and not have been a great burden beyond what the benefit was, though of todays PRs not even half have been legit.

I’m fed up with the fest and thinking to revoke my participation this year…

I think there has always been a cap. Even though I was really late to complete the 4 PRs the last years, I still got a shirt.

I was late the last years as well, though no one I talked with from the exercism team does remember having seen some public communicated cap the last years.

This year though, it is even part of the “participation rules” (emphasis mine):

To get a shirt, you must make four pull requests (PRs) between October 1–31 in any time zone. Pull requests can be to any public repository on GitHub, not just the ones highlighted. The pull request must contain commits you made yourself. If a maintainer reports your pull request as spam, it will not be counted toward your participation in Hacktoberfest. If a maintainer reports behavior that’s not in line with the project’s code of conduct, you will be ineligible to participate. This year, the first 70,000 participants can earn a T-shirt.

Just checked with waybackmachine, indeed it was communicated publicly that there is a limit last year:

It was 50k last year, see: Hacktoberfest Is Back for Year Six! | DigitalOcean

This year, the first 50,000 participants will be eligible to receive the limited edition shirt.

EDIT: Ah, you found it already.