Good   

#hacktoberfest #hacktoberfest2025 #opensource #socialcoding #Holopin

This year #Hacktoberfest is planting trees again to contributors, so I did my share and got my tree planted! 🙂

The t-shirt giveaways are back again, but once you win it and it's time to collect you'll learn that to do so you need to accept the "final holopin badge", and I've been ignoring those as I have no interest in having an #holopin account again. There is no information about whether the t-shirt is going to be sent from the US (as happened in the past) or elsewhere (for those who want to know in advance and avoid needing to have to pay customs for it). The way to communicate with them (I'd like to ask!) seems to be via discord, and to enter their discord you need to go through a privacy-invasive age verification process I don't want to go through 😞

The real use for this year's #Hacktoberfest, it seems was that I got an unsolicited e-mail from #Holopin, reminding me that they have my e-mail address - not for the best of reasons. Did I really subscribe to an holopin mailing list? I don't think so, but matters not - this made me realize that I *am* subscribed to one or several holopin mailing lists, so what better moment to unsubscribe? Click, click, oops, "403 ERROR" (Generated by cloudfront).

Well, OK... why do I want an holopin account, anyway? Let me just delete my account, and get done with it. Profile, Account settings, Deleting personal data... "To request account deletion, please email support@holopin.io." WTF, seriously? It's 2025!

Mail sent.

Okay, I think the #Holopin idea is kinda cute. However, I'd like to see it as #FLOSS with just *everyone* being able to add pins for free.

Maybe starting that... Or is there already something in the marking?

I get straight to the point. I hate the changes made for #hacktoberfest 2023... Changing the rewards from a shirt + stickers, or planting a tree to just having some kind of virtual reward package (#holopin badges from what I gathered).

I hate this because it removes a way to show off your past experiences without needing the internet to do so.

With a shirt or even just the stickers, I could show them to someone else and then talk about hacktoberfest and such... With planting a tree, I guess I can show the confirmation (I haven't chosen this option so no idea what kind of messages and feedback you get here)?

Of course the event is not about the material stuff, but rather to foster and encourage people contributing to #opensource projects.
That still doesn't mean we need to have everything virtual.

Like I said: With a shirt and stickers I can show them offline...
With these stickers I not only have to remember the Holopin profile URL I have, but also need to make sure that the people I share this with have internet to even see the site.

It removes a proper way of sharing the word, because I have yet to see a person that actively shares their holopin account to others to look at...

This is just... disapointing for me.