Why not let them have the status boost? This isn't zero sum.
True, it is actually negative sum, because fake merit erodes trust in real merit, as it makes it a lot harder to spot the latter.
The commit in itself might add some minuscule value to the project, but when you take into account the time it takes to check the commit and approve it, you're probably back at negative value again.
Plus, there's the problem of people doing this in an adversarial way. How can you tell whether a random commit touching 100 files is the work of an enthusiastic beginner, or a malicious hacker that's hidden a subtle attack somewhere? Well, you need to spend your time carefully checking it.
So it's way more pragmatic just to set up some automated filter to put all of this stuff in the bin.
Oh and by the way:
> I wouldn’t think a commit fixing typos ever attributed merit to a developer.
The first sentences of the article in question:
> Successful contributions to open source projects are a kind of currency. GitHub in particular encourages this in a number of ways: [...] Potential hiring managers often take note of this. Recruiters often find and screen candidates this way.
If you judge first time contributors on accepted PRs that's as dumb as doing it based on their activity. It tells you nothing about quality. You're the stupid one for assuming all maintainers are as strict as you are.
How do you distinguish those who know what they are doing from those who only can write a prompt and copy the result?
Making the haystack bigger is a bad idea if you search the needle
Linux lately received a lot of fixes for drivers nobody has cared about for ages. They decided to remove them. Maybe they should have done this earlier, I don't know, but that happened because every code change comes with cost down the line. For real contributers, this cost is much more limited and they have a higher probability of burden the cost down the line.
Pure AI MRs are just rude, because it's just "here take this, don't really care what this is, but AI said it being good, I won't be around, so you will have to deal with this code after the merge and you better don't overlook anything, because I personally don't really know what I am doing, I only know how to have AI making something that looks convincing. Good luck fixing the bugs this change introduces".