As a participant, here are a list of things you are encouraged to do:
- Pick projects that either will actually benefit from your contributions or you will learn something from the contribution. Unfortunately, with the start of Hacktoberfest, a lot of repositories are created just to get attention. Contributing to them is easy, sure, but it doesn't actually benefit the open-source community or, ultimatly, you. Choose a project wisely.
- Be respectful and patient when contributing to any repository. Although this should apply all year round and not just during Hacktoberfest, it's essential to remember in Hacktoberfest. Most repositories get 10x more traffic, contributions, issues and pull requests in Hacktoberfest. So, the maintainers are almost always in over their heads with the amount of reviews they have to provide and keep up with. So, respect the repository's rules and maintainers and be patient if it takes time for your pull requests to be reviewed or for you to get assigned an issue.
- Keep contributing even after Hacktoberfest. Hacktoberfest encourages you to remember to contribute to open source projects, but it shouldn't be just this month. Take the time every now and then to contribute to these projects and help the community.
As a participant, here's a list of things you shouldn't do:
- Don't send in useless pull requests. For example, I had a lot of participants contributing by sending pull requests that just adds a line in a file, or adds a comment for the sake of adding something. This is a waste of time, counterproductive and is the entire opposite of what Hacktoberfest is about.
- Don't overstep your boundaries. If an issue is not assigned to you, do not send in a pull request to solve it anyway. Most repositories and projects have a certain workflow to manage issues and pull requests, and this can cause a mess. Check before working on an issue if someone is working on it.