The Pull Request from Hell

github.com

4 points·of··6 comments

Can someone enlighten us non-Django, non-Python folks?

nope

Rather than saying nope and ignoring the request only causes the contributor to not contribute again . If you could only explain why it should not be done. Also this is one of the main reason why people don't contribute to open Source. Rather than ridicule them , tell them what they should do better.

In an ideal world, the open source community would be precisely the sort of mutually-supportive group that would lead to this. Unfortunately, it can't be, in general:

- Telling someone who makes a bad or unsuitable suggestion why it's bad requires a certain amount of communication skill and desire to communicate that programmers (particularly amateur programmers) are not widely known for

- It doesn't scale: If an already busy project leader is handling some pull requests that are valid (and doing her own work at the same time), then handling random pull requests that aren't suitable for whatever reason becomes unpleasant work.

I know many people reading this already have lots of free time and lots of good communication skills, but I think it's safe to say that you couldn't say that about many unpaid open-source project leaders.

Bit sad how someone trying to contribute to an open source project is shoved on hn with the sole intention to ridicule them without explanation.

It may be circumstantial, but the OP has the same name as the github user who posted the issue and was shot down. Same person? Without more info who knows (or cares). I can't remember the last time I saw a post on HN that was so pointless.

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