This sounded like a good idea that was poorly executed/supported IMHO. I can honestly say I have maybe half a dozen repos and even more Gists that would have probably been better suited as community projects.
I did Hacktoberfest for the first time last month and it was a lot of fun and a great learning experience. The are very few sites dedicated to this sort of open source community coding and the ones that are out there don't get enough attention. I honestly think that if more people knew about them, more people would participate.
I vote to keep it open, and to promote it.
Edit: I didn't read all the ancient chat transcripts but the impression I got from poking around was that the org was for projects that the community could work on together. It feels sort of rude (to me) to just submit a PR on some random repo just because you have a good idea, but if there's a place where you know your PRs are welcome people will be more likely to contribute.