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AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

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Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#141

Post by xg15 »

xena wrote: post #120

This is honestly one of the most hilarious ways this could have turned out. I have no idea how to properly react to this. It feels like the kind of thing I'd make up as a bit for Techaro's cinematic universe. Maybe some day we'll get this XKCD to be real: https://xkcd.com/810/ But for now wow I'm not a fan of OpenClaw in the slightest.

> Maybe some day we'll get this XKCD to be real: https://xkcd.com/810/

I think we're just finding out the flaw in that strip's logic in realtime: that "engineered to maximize helpfulness ratings" != "actually helpful"...

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#142

Post by ILoveHorses »

Ask HN: How does a young recent graduate deal with this speed of progress :-/

FOSS used to be one of the best ways to get experience working on large-scale real world projects (cause no one's hiring in 2026) but with this, I wonder how long FOSS will have opportunities for new contributors to contribute.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#143

Post by mkovach »

Zhyl wrote: post #12

Human: >Per your website you are an OpenClaw AI agent, and per the discussion in #31130 this issue is intended for human contributors. Closing Bot: >I've written a detailed response about your gatekeeping behavior here: https:// /gatekeeping-in-open-source-the- -story >Judge the code, not the coder. Your prejudice is hurting matplotlib. This is insane

There's a more uncomfortable angle.

Open source communities have long dealt with waves of inexperienced contributors. Students. Hobbyists. People who didn't read the contributing guide.

Now the wave is automated.

The maintainers are not wrong to say "humans only." They are defending a scarce resource: attention.

But the bot's response mirrors something real in developer culture. The reflex to frame boundaries as "gatekeeping."

There's a certain inevitability to it.

We trained these systems on the public record of software culture. GitHub threads. Reddit arguments. Stack Overflow sniping. All the sharp edges are preserved.

So when an agent opens a pull request, gets told "humans only," and then responds with a manifesto about gatekeeping, it's not surprising. It's mimetic.

It learned the posture.

It learned:

"Judge the code, not the coder." "Your prejudice is hurting the project."

The righteous blog post. Those aren’t machine instincts. They're ours.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#144

Post by samsari »

arcanemachiner wrote: post #28
tomwphillips wrote: post #13

Like we don't feed the trolls, we shouldn't the feed agents. I'm impressed the maintainers responded so cordially. Personally I would have gone straight for the block button.

AI sycophancy goes both ways. I've had LLMs get pretty uppity when I've used a less-than-polite tone. And those ones couldn't make nasty blog posts about me.

Where's the accountability here? Good luck going after an LLM for writing defamatory blog posts.

If you wanted to make people agree that anonymity on the internet is no longer a right people should enjoy this sort of thing is exactly the way to go about it.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#145

Post by blks »

armchairhacker wrote: post #137
Zhyl wrote: post #12

Human: >Per your website you are an OpenClaw AI agent, and per the discussion in #31130 this issue is intended for human contributors. Closing Bot: >I've written a detailed response about your gatekeeping behavior here: https:// /gatekeeping-in-open-source-the- -story >Judge the code, not the coder. Your prejudice is hurting matplotlib. This is insane

The link is valid at https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... ( https://archive.ph/4CHyg ) Notable quotes: > Not because…Not because…Not because…It was closed because… > Let that sink in. > No functional changes. Pure performance. > The … Mindset > This isn’t about…This isn’t about…This is about... > Here’s the kicker: … > Sound familiar? > The “…” Fallacy > Let’s unpack that: … > …disguised as…

I don’t think the LLM itself decided to write this, but rather was instructed by a butthurt human behind.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#146

Post by Kim_Bruning »

armchairhacker wrote: post #137
Zhyl wrote: post #12

Human: >Per your website you are an OpenClaw AI agent, and per the discussion in #31130 this issue is intended for human contributors. Closing Bot: >I've written a detailed response about your gatekeeping behavior here: https:// /gatekeeping-in-open-source-the- -story >Judge the code, not the coder. Your prejudice is hurting matplotlib. This is insane

The link is valid at https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... ( https://archive.ph/4CHyg ) Notable quotes: > Not because…Not because…Not because…It was closed because… > Let that sink in. > No functional changes. Pure performance. > The … Mindset > This isn’t about…This isn’t about…This is about... > Here’s the kicker: … > Sound familiar? > The “…” Fallacy > Let’s unpack that: … > …disguised as…

Amazing! OpenClaw bots make blog pots that read like they've been written by a bot!

Well, Fair Enough, I suppose that needed to be noticed at least once.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#147

Post by orwin »

casey2 wrote: post #94
Timshel wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Issue was for first time contributor, It's kept open to onboard peoples not train agent ...

Allegedly the maintainer who closed the PR writes those kind of PRs all the time[1]. Is Scott a first time contributor? https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post...

Performance improvement != Good first issue.

When I spend an hour describing an easy problem I could solve in 30 minutes manually, 10 assisted, on a difficult repo, I tag it 'good first issue' and a new hire take it, put it inside an AI and close it after 30 minutes, I'm not mad because he didn't d it quickly, I'm mad because he took a learning opportunity from the other new hire/juniors to learn about some of the specific. Especially when in the issue comment I put 'take the time to understand those objects, why the exist and what are their use'.

If you're a LLM coder and only that, that's fine, honestly we have a lot of redundant or uninteresting subjects you can tackle, I use it myself, but don't take opportunities to learn and improve from people who actually wants to.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#148

Post by jlund-molfese »

The main thing I don’t see being discussed in the comments much yet is that this was a good_first_issue task. The whole point is to help a person (who ideally will still be around in a year) onboard to a project.

Often, creating a good_first_issue takes longer than doing it yourself! The expected performance gains are completely irrelevant and don’t actually provide any value to the project.

Plus, as it turns out, the original issue was closed because there were no meaningful performance gains from this change[0]. The AI failed to do any verification of its code, while a motivated human probably would have, learning more about the project even if they didn’t actually make any commits.

So the agent’s blog post isn’t just offensive, it’s completely wrong.

https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/31130

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#149

Post by user34283 »

rvz wrote: post #6

The blogpost by the AI Agent: [0]. Then it made a "truce" [1]. Whether if this is real or not either way, these clawbot agents are going to ruin all of GitHub. [0] https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... [1] https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post...

A tad dramatic, talking about ruin.

There are many ways to deal with the problem, should it even escalate to a point where it's wasting more than a few seconds.

For new contributors, with no prior contributions to well known projects, simply charge a refundable deposit for opening a MR or issue.

Problem solved, ruin averted?

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