I don't think these PRs are a net negative for a project - I've never turned one down, anyway. I just don't understand what the contributor gets out of the arrangement, other than Github badges. Some theories I've held:
1) They want/intend to contribute more and are starting small, but either get overwhelmed, lose interest, don't have enough time, etc.
2) They are students padding their resumes (making small PRs so they can say they contributed to x-number of open source projects.)
>1) They want/intend to contribute more and are starting small, but either get overwhelmed, lose interest, don't have enough time, etc
Yeah that's essentially how people are encouraged to start contributing to open source projects, making small changes and cleaning up documentation and such. It's hard to allow for this while also preventing the other two categories.
1) They want/intend to contribute more and are starting small, but either get overwhelmed, lose interest, don't have enough time, etc.
2) They are students padding their resumes (making small PRs so they can say they contributed to x-number of open source projects.)
3) Its just the Github badges.