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We fixed f-string typos in popular Python repos

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Re: We fixed f-string typos in popular Python repos

#101
post #69

We've been one of 666 repos, and I'm not too happy of having our repo used as advertising space. Some thoughts: - I'm happy to receive fix-a-typo PRs from human users. In this case the other side demonstrated that they care by putting in a bit of manual effort, and a small PR often paves the way towards larger contributions. I also know that open source beginners get really excited about their first small contributio…

I just... think you should reconsider your stance on this. If you made a mistake in a public repo and someone else caught it (via scan of your repo or otherwise), it's a pretty bad look to be anything but grateful at that point, PR benefits for the bot aside.

The issue they had is being part of the advertisement, not that the bot did the work.

Everyone is out for notoriety and street cred instead of just doing good for the community.

Re: We fixed f-string typos in popular Python repos

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the sentiment but you should be judging the PR, not the source. Ask yourself: would you have happily accepted the same PR that the bot sent if it came from a human? By all means, I am not against having bots identify themselves properly, my point is that "effort from bot PR is ~0", "it advertises their platform" are simply not the right reasons to judge this situation by.

Ask yourself: would you treat a PR differently if it came from a regular, trusted contributor, or some random person (or bot)?

I would if the content of the PR were complicated. Not in this case.

Re: We fixed f-string typos in popular Python repos

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the sentiment but you should be judging the PR, not the source. Ask yourself: would you have happily accepted the same PR that the bot sent if it came from a human? By all means, I am not against having bots identify themselves properly, my point is that "effort from bot PR is ~0", "it advertises their platform" are simply not the right reasons to judge this situation by.

Ask yourself: would you treat a PR differently if it came from a regular, trusted contributor, or some random person (or bot)?

Sure you would probably treat it differently but isn't it being elitist and harmful to the open source community in general to outright shoot down or discourage any PR from a lesser known or unknown source if it is a good PR? I think we should encourage novices to contribute and we shouldn't be hostile to them so that they can get past the novice phase and become trusted contributors. If a bot produces valid helpful and well formed PRs, why would you discriminate against them completely when they improve your codebase?

Re: We fixed f-string typos in popular Python repos

#105
post #84

Maybe catenation of an fString and a string should yield an fString by type promotion? String is morally "any" so it feels to me like a contextual narrowing of type.

What if you wanted to append a string with braces, could you? (I don’t know Python!)

Plus it would lead to subtle security vulns and other bugs. A contrived example :

f”{bot} spammed my repo saying” + “touch(‘{path}’) was wrong lol.”

Now my path var has been disclosed.

Re: We fixed f-string typos in popular Python repos

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not really a feasible solution in Python because that change would break a load of existing code.

So what? Raise a deprecation notice, treat it as a fatal error in two or three years and that's it. PHP has been doing this for years now.

PHP has also been responsible for the majority of exploited servers and misconfigured applications. Whatever they are doing it, I take it as a strong negative signal.

Re: We fixed f-string typos in popular Python repos

#107
I don't mind it's a bot, and I really appreciate that apparently a human made the final review before sending the PR. But I don't like that the tittle of the commit is:

> Fix issue probably-meant-fstring found at https://codereview.doctor

I expect a more neutral title for a commit, something like

> Fix fstring in

Each maintainer/project has their own (weird) rules about titles, and if any other files must log the changes, and regression test, and whatever they like. But I think no maintainer/project expect to see the name of the author in the commit tile.

Re: We fixed f-string typos in popular Python repos

#109
post #69

We've been one of 666 repos, and I'm not too happy of having our repo used as advertising space. Some thoughts: - I'm happy to receive fix-a-typo PRs from human users. In this case the other side demonstrated that they care by putting in a bit of manual effort, and a small PR often paves the way towards larger contributions. I also know that open source beginners get really excited about their first small contributio…

I just... think you should reconsider your stance on this. If you made a mistake in a public repo and someone else caught it (via scan of your repo or otherwise), it's a pretty bad look to be anything but grateful at that point, PR benefits for the bot aside.

The problem with scanners is that they usually have a pretty high false positive rate. When automatically opening the PR, they are basically putting the human review part on the maintainer (burdening them with additional and possibly useless work) while also using their repo as advertising space without consent. When the scan goes wrong and has a lot of false positives or it looks like they just got lucky, it's easy for a maintainer to feel like most of the cost was handed to them, while most of the upsides (like QA and brand recognition) are reaped by the bot. When a human opens the PR, you at least know that they valued your time and checked the changes beforehand, even if it's based on the results of the bot and contains the same errors.

Now, if the bot catches an actual error and improves the software, the result is obviously net good and the tad of free advertising is deserved. But it can easily feel like a PR campaign paid for with carelessly annexed maintainer time and in quite a few cases, it simply is.

Re: We fixed f-string typos in popular Python repos

#110
post #69

We've been one of 666 repos, and I'm not too happy of having our repo used as advertising space. Some thoughts: - I'm happy to receive fix-a-typo PRs from human users. In this case the other side demonstrated that they care by putting in a bit of manual effort, and a small PR often paves the way towards larger contributions. I also know that open source beginners get really excited about their first small contributio…

Isn't having a public github repo consent?
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