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PR spam today looks like email spam in the early 2000s

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Re: PR spam today looks like email spam in the early 2000s

#31

Post by sureglymop »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #12
Retr0id wrote: post #2

Maybe we should cut out the middle-man and make it easy for people to donate token credits to open-source projects, and let the maintainers decide how to use them.

Unfortunately "I donated money/tokens to open source" doesn't land interviews as well as "I'm a big contributor to open source" People spamming Open Source repos with AI PRs aren't trying to help Open Source, they're trying to build a brand, some kind of credible online presence with their username on it, or whatever else. It's purely selfish and completely opposite to the spirit of Open Software imo

Interestingly then, those contributions are also not a measurement of the candidates abilities but mostly of the AI models.

I wonder if hiring adjusts to that but I doubt it. It might only push it even more towards "marketing matters most" instead of actual ability.

Re: PR spam today looks like email spam in the early 2000s

#32

Post by parliament32 »

ffaccount2 wrote: post #25
bluefirebrand wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately "I donated money/tokens to open source" doesn't land interviews as well as "I'm a big contributor to open source" People spamming Open Source repos with AI PRs aren't trying to help Open Source, they're trying to build a brand, some kind of credible online presence with their username on it, or whatever else. It's purely selfish and completely opposite to the spirit of Open Software imo

>People spamming Open Source repos with AI PRs aren't trying to help Open Source, they're trying to build a brand I am certain many of them honestly believe that they are doing the right thing and that they are helping. After all hey, they implemented a feature or fixed a bug for the community! It's a grim worldview if you think they are all just selfish.

They're stuck in this idea that somehow they're better at prompting the slop generator than anyone else, therefore they're helpful and people definitely want their output merged in to these various projects. They will have trouble understanding that their personal contribution to the whole process is somewhere between negligible and harmful, and simply donating those tokens to a maintainer who is actually aware of how the codebase works and where all the skeletons are is a much better proposition.

Re: PR spam today looks like email spam in the early 2000s

#33

Post by stackghost »

sureglymop wrote: post #31
bluefirebrand wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately "I donated money/tokens to open source" doesn't land interviews as well as "I'm a big contributor to open source" People spamming Open Source repos with AI PRs aren't trying to help Open Source, they're trying to build a brand, some kind of credible online presence with their username on it, or whatever else. It's purely selfish and completely opposite to the spirit of Open Software imo

Interestingly then, those contributions are also not a measurement of the candidates abilities but mostly of the AI models. I wonder if hiring adjusts to that but I doubt it. It might only push it even more towards "marketing matters most" instead of actual ability.

>I wonder if hiring adjusts to that but I doubt it

Tech hiring/interviews have almost nothing to do with assessing the candidates' ability to do the job.

Re: PR spam today looks like email spam in the early 2000s

#34

Post by tokioyoyo »

jimbokun wrote: post #9
kridsdale1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are a lot of “tech schools” overseas that require students to show proof of contribution to open source.

It would be wonderful if the instructors at those schools built relationships with open source maintainers and the maintainers knew when their students were submitting PRs. Could be used as a teaching experience that many maintainers would be happy to participate in, instead of feeling attacked with random low quality PRs.

You might be underestimating the number of little schools, and computer shops. I can recall even back in 2005, there were HTML shops popping up here and there, in little cities around the world.

Re: PR spam today looks like email spam in the early 2000s

#35

Post by Larrikin »

ffaccount2 wrote: post #25
bluefirebrand wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately "I donated money/tokens to open source" doesn't land interviews as well as "I'm a big contributor to open source" People spamming Open Source repos with AI PRs aren't trying to help Open Source, they're trying to build a brand, some kind of credible online presence with their username on it, or whatever else. It's purely selfish and completely opposite to the spirit of Open Software imo

>People spamming Open Source repos with AI PRs aren't trying to help Open Source, they're trying to build a brand I am certain many of them honestly believe that they are doing the right thing and that they are helping. After all hey, they implemented a feature or fixed a bug for the community! It's a grim worldview if you think they are all just selfish.

I would argue this is naive and there's very little evidence to support this opinion other than just wishing it was true.

It may happen on smaller projects with few users but not in meaningful large projects.

Re: PR spam today looks like email spam in the early 2000s

#36

Post by parliament32 »

runarberg wrote: post #3

AI agents who review the slop created by other AI agents is not the answer here. I much prefer a blanket ban on PRs and issues created by AI agents (which is what I personally do for my repos; so far I have closed one[1]). In fact I would love a github alternative which considers AI contributions to be a breach of their terms of use and ban any people who let AI agents loose on their platform. 1: https://github.com/r…

I would kill for an LLM-free platform.

Personally I just stopped accepting public contributions entirely. File issues, sure, but no PRs apart from accounts I added who have contributed before the slopageddon started.

Maybe the whole web-of-trust idea will make a comeback for code contributions, it seems like a clean solution.

Re: PR spam today looks like email spam in the early 2000s

#37

Post by Orphis »

runarberg wrote: post #3

AI agents who review the slop created by other AI agents is not the answer here. I much prefer a blanket ban on PRs and issues created by AI agents (which is what I personally do for my repos; so far I have closed one[1]). In fact I would love a github alternative which considers AI contributions to be a breach of their terms of use and ban any people who let AI agents loose on their platform. 1: https://github.com/r…

But what about the good AI driven contributions though? Do you categorize all AI changes as slop by default or only the real bad ones that mix refactoring and tons of other unrelated changes with a fix?

Some can fix real issues, with a well targeted fix (not rewriting the world), well defined test and write up. If you accepted PRs before for other issues, you should be able to review and accept those too.

Re: PR spam today looks like email spam in the early 2000s

#38

Post by runarberg »

Orphis wrote: post #37
runarberg wrote: post #3

AI agents who review the slop created by other AI agents is not the answer here. I much prefer a blanket ban on PRs and issues created by AI agents (which is what I personally do for my repos; so far I have closed one[1]). In fact I would love a github alternative which considers AI contributions to be a breach of their terms of use and ban any people who let AI agents loose on their platform. 1: https://github.com/r…

But what about the good AI driven contributions though? Do you categorize all AI changes as slop by default or only the real bad ones that mix refactoring and tons of other unrelated changes with a fix? Some can fix real issues, with a well targeted fix (not rewriting the world), well defined test and write up. If you accepted PRs before for other issues, you should be able to review and accept those too.

I have never gotten a good PR from an AI agent (that I know of) so I guess I’ll deal with it when it happens. I suspect I will still just reject it out of principal.

Re: PR spam today looks like email spam in the early 2000s

#39

Post by thewebguyd »

ffaccount2 wrote: post #25
bluefirebrand wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately "I donated money/tokens to open source" doesn't land interviews as well as "I'm a big contributor to open source" People spamming Open Source repos with AI PRs aren't trying to help Open Source, they're trying to build a brand, some kind of credible online presence with their username on it, or whatever else. It's purely selfish and completely opposite to the spirit of Open Software imo

>People spamming Open Source repos with AI PRs aren't trying to help Open Source, they're trying to build a brand I am certain many of them honestly believe that they are doing the right thing and that they are helping. After all hey, they implemented a feature or fixed a bug for the community! It's a grim worldview if you think they are all just selfish.

Yeah. I'm sure some (maybe a lot?) are for selfish reasons, but there is also a pretty large section of users who have always wanted to contribute, help out, or make some features in their favorite projects and just never had the skill or opportunity to do so and see LLMs as a way for them to final actualize that desire.

Think about it from the perspective of a non-programmer, or even total non-technical person. Vibe coding to someone like that looks like complete magic. Suddenly to that person, a whole new world has opened up. Ideas, features, bug fixes they've always wanted but could never do now look possible. That particular group of people don't see it as spamming the maintainer, they genuinely feel like they're finally able to help.

Re: PR spam today looks like email spam in the early 2000s

#40

Post by toss1 »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #12
Retr0id wrote: post #2

Maybe we should cut out the middle-man and make it easy for people to donate token credits to open-source projects, and let the maintainers decide how to use them.

Unfortunately "I donated money/tokens to open source" doesn't land interviews as well as "I'm a big contributor to open source" People spamming Open Source repos with AI PRs aren't trying to help Open Source, they're trying to build a brand, some kind of credible online presence with their username on it, or whatever else. It's purely selfish and completely opposite to the spirit of Open Software imo

A fine example of Goodhart's law: "When a measurement becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measurement."

Measuring open source contributions as a way to judge prospective employees used to be a good measurement.

Of course, prospective employees started to not only contribute to OS projects because it was good, but to make sure their contributions were high and noticeable — contributing not for the good of the project but for their own good, and now with amplification of AI 'contributions'.

So, measuring contributions to open source projects is now approximately worthless for evaluating prospective employees.

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