We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports • Hacker News Board

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#261

Post by bluGill » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

bakugo wrote: post #246

koliber wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen an interesting behavior in India. If I ask someone on the street for directions, they will always give me an answer, even if they don't know. If they don't know, they'll make something up. This was strange. I asked a lot of Indian people about it and they said that it has to do with "saving face". Saying "I don't know" is a disgraceful thing. So if someone does not know the answer, they make something up in…

> This was strange. I asked a lot of Indian people about it and they said that it has to do with "saving face". Saying "I don't know" is a disgraceful thing. I've recently learned that this particular type of "saving face" has a name: "izzat". Look that up if you want to know more.

First I've heard of izzat...

I'm not sure how to write that better, but the way you worded that made me suspect it was NSFW and I hesitated, but eventually decided I'd risk it. At least everything I found was work safe, and I learned a lot. I encourage everyone else who hasn't heard the word to look it up.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#262

Post by NegativeK » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

mixedbit wrote: post #156

Long time ago Sourceforge and then GitHub promoted into the current default the model of open source distribution which is not sustainable and I doubt it is something that the founding fathers of Free Software/Open Source had in mind. Open source licenses are about freedom of using and modifying software. The movement grew out of frustration that commercial software cannot be freely improved and fixed by the user to…

> has nothing to do with open source

I partially disagree. It does have to do with open source: Github (et al) are about creating a community around an open source project. It's hard to get adoption without a community; it gives you valid bug reports, use cases you didn't think of, and patches.

You can, if you want, turn off PRs, issues, and literally any feedback from the outside world. But most people don't want that.

> and is not sustainable

I 100% agree. People (including people at for profit companies) are taking advantage of the communities that open source maintainers are trying to build and manipulating guilt and a sense of duty to get their way.

The most insidious burnout I see is in disorganized volunteer communities. A volunteer is praised for jumping in with both feet, pushes themselves really hard, is rewarded vocally and often and with more authority, and is often the one applying the most pressure to themselves. There's no supervisor to tell them to pace themselves. And when their view switches from idealistic to realistic and then falls into pessimistic, they view the environment through a toxic lens.

Then they vanish.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#263

Post by dizhn » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:50 PM UTC

causalscience wrote: post #44

nchmy wrote: post #11

I've been helping a bit with OWASP documentation lately and there's been a surge of Indian students eagerly opening nonsensical issues and PRs and all of the communication and code is clearly 100% LLMs. They'll even talk back and forth with each other. It's a huge headache for the maintainers. I suggested following what Ghostty does where everything starts as discussions - only maintainers create issues, and PRs can…

> Indian students Is this cultural? I ran a small business some years ago (later failed) and was paying for contract work to various people. At the I perceived the pattern that Indian contractors would never ever ask for clarifications, would never say they didn't know something, would never say they didn't understand something, etc. Instead they just ran with whatever they happened to have in their mind, until I cal…

I was contacted by a guy who said he found a vulnerability on my site. Something like phpinfo being available or something. I informed them that I was aware of it and it's not a vulnerability but did offer to give them a small Amazon gift code if they wanted.

This might be part of the motivation. What's pocket change in the west might be good money in the 3rd world.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#264

Post by samiv » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:50 PM UTC

bdsa wrote: post #247

egorfine wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not worty pressing forward and causing a scene Tell me more. Why?

Probably because they find it uncomfortable to be pressed and the net result is a less productive relationship.

Exactly this. You just put them on the spot and they lose face and you're embarrassing them. Besides this interaction has already made it know they they don't know the answer so what's the benefit of forcing them to announce they they don't know something?

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#265

Post by SloppyDrive » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:50 PM UTC

j-bos wrote: post #138

Seems like a lot of the problems had by the low friction of first eternal september and now LLM genrated reports and contributions, could be resolved by restoring friction. First time reporters/contributers could be required to send their report or PR by paper mail. Strict requirements for the sender: all text printed on postcards (no letter opening) as QR or other data codes according to a standard formatting. Anyth…

The eternal-september; or its international equivalent, kills things because the nature of the public you are interacting with has changed.

These issues with reports and junk contributions come about because there is a huge payoff for pretending to be part of the community, but the benefit from actually contributing is generally less direct.

I dont think you can solve this with "friction", because the people you want to dissuade are more tolerant to these kinds of barriers than the ones you want invite in.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#266

Post by malkia » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:53 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #198

causalscience wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indian students Is this cultural? I ran a small business some years ago (later failed) and was paying for contract work to various people. At the I perceived the pattern that Indian contractors would never ever ask for clarifications, would never say they didn't know something, would never say they didn't understand something, etc. Instead they just ran with whatever they happened to have in their mind, until I cal…

From a half-Indian friend of mine, he described this as "ask vs guess" culture. https://medium.com/redhill-review/navigating-ask-and-guess-c... Ask culture scales a lot better in a fast changing world full of strangers. Guess culture saves friction, but only in situations where people are mostly guessing correctly because the social structure and expectations are fixed.

Thank you for sharing the article! Now I'm puzzled this about myself - what I am...

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#267

Post by Sharlin » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

wojciii wrote: post #79

From https://curl.se/docs/code-of-conduct.html : "As contributors and maintainers of this project, we pledge to respect all people who contribute through reporting issues, posting feature requests, updating documentation, submitting pull requests or patches, and other activities" Why have a code of conduct while being hostile to contributors? I think they should handle this differently.

"Contribute" comes from the Latin con- "with, together" and tribuere "bestow". We need a new word for these slop submissions. "Detribute" might work well, for something that takes away from the common good, rather than adding to it.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#268

Post by BugsJustFindMe » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

mixedbit wrote: post #156

Long time ago Sourceforge and then GitHub promoted into the current default the model of open source distribution which is not sustainable and I doubt it is something that the founding fathers of Free Software/Open Source had in mind. Open source licenses are about freedom of using and modifying software. The movement grew out of frustration that commercial software cannot be freely improved and fixed by the user to…

> This is software support, it is a job, it should be paid.

It is paid, even if not in money. It seems like maybe you lack awareness of the other forms of capital and reward that exist, because your framing implicitly insists that financial capital is the only form of capital and that monetary reward is the only form of reward. But there are also a bunch of other forms of capital, like social, cultural, symbolic, etc. which you have missed, and there are non-capital (non-convertible) forms of reward, like feeling good about something. It's the entire reason why permissive licenses still preserve attribution.

To wit, people maintain things literally all the time either purely for prestige, or because being a contributing member of a community, even a small one, makes them feel good, or because knowing that maintaining things leads others to also maintain things. There are both intrinsic and extrinsic non-monetary gains here.

Stallman makes the same critical error in his foundational writings, so at least you're not alone in this.

(A foundational read on the subject of the different forms of capital is Pierre Bourdieu's The Forms of Capital: https://www.scribd.com/document/859144970/P-Bourdieu-the-For...)

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#269

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

javcasas wrote: post #108

wojciii wrote: post #79

From https://curl.se/docs/code-of-conduct.html : "As contributors and maintainers of this project, we pledge to respect all people who contribute through reporting issues, posting feature requests, updating documentation, submitting pull requests or patches, and other activities" Why have a code of conduct while being hostile to contributors? I think they should handle this differently.

I don't think that telling a LLM to create a fake bug report is "contributing".

[deleted]

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#270

Post by cons0le » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #129

causalscience wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indian students Is this cultural? I ran a small business some years ago (later failed) and was paying for contract work to various people. At the I perceived the pattern that Indian contractors would never ever ask for clarifications, would never say they didn't know something, would never say they didn't understand something, etc. Instead they just ran with whatever they happened to have in their mind, until I cal…

I think it's mostly not cultural but just bad engineers lying. IT jobs pays the best in India, and it attracts people who have no skills in IT to just fake their way in. So for every good developer in India there are probably 20 bad ones who have no idea what they are doing.

I honestly think its a symptom of having almost no "career mobility". If it's impossible to get promoted / find better jobs, then being skilled doesn't go as far as brown-nosing.

People will only apply themselves if they think it will help them get to a better place.