> Should we stop giving fun test tasks to our job candidates? Yes
Yeah, fun for who exactly?
Me. That sounds way more fun than inverting a binary tree, and they pay candidates for their time.
We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag
181–190 of 254 posts
Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag
#182There's got to be a concept to differentiate the industry plants who start an "open source" project that has enough funding for a $900 bug bounty. They are speaking and developing in the language of corruption and they don't even know it. Of course you will receive AI bot spam, but unfortunately it will continue if you don't take a hard look in the mirror.
Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? No. A PR is me giving my time to the project. I don't get anything out of it except the warm feeling of having helped out. If I have to pay money to submit a PR then I'm going to play video games instead.
> A PR is me giving my time to the project Unfortunately, the issue is that time is not enough of a filter anymore. The time from machines is basically worthless compared to yours, so you need to give something else, and that something else needs to be something that shows you have actual skin in the game.
> so you need to give something else
Well no, they don't need to. As they said they could just do something else instead of contributing (and I know I would too).
Your proposal would just end up killing those open source projects even more than what you are trying to solve.
Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't that put us into the same position? Let's also be realistic, everything that can be automated will. Even if that thing is worse off for it. There's a clear historic pattern of this. Companies and people love to be penny wise and pound foolish.
> Doesn't that put us into the same position? Of course not, because the number of low-quality PRs with $10 attached to it will be lower than whatever number of PRs are being created now.
You also lose out on a lot of would-be PRs. By people who don't have the money, don't have trust, or have a visceral "fuck you" stance. There's a lot more reasons that this suggestion creates a gate that dissuades the people you want. I stand by that the solution is naïve, but you're welcome to give it a try on your projects. I'm sure it'll be effective at reducing a lot of spammers, but I'm also pretty convinced it'll come with a large false positive rate, which is invisible (giving you false confidence)
Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, because we'd hate to allow people from poor countries to contribute to FOSS projects, right? Or teenagers without full access to online banking. Or the unemployed.
Oh, give me a break. No one is taking the ability from others to fork the repo. If these exceptional cases really were to happen, how fast would it be for someone else to notice and do one of (a) notify the maintainers to get this particular user whitelisted or (b) front the entry costs?
Sounds like bandaids on top of bandaids, at which point you start to wonder if the idea is fundamentally broken.
Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Github already has the payment infrastructure. ...which is not available to maintainers to use in this way. > there is always good old "make a M-PESA/SEPA/Pix/UPI transfer to account XYZ" And then lock out anyone who is not from the same country as the maintainer, on a platform that is known for its global reach. Moreover, you're introducing significant anti-human friction. For privacy-conscious people, it's a comp…
> significant anti-human friction Yes, that friction is intentional . The lazy people don't want to do it? Great, there is very little chance their contributions are worthwhile. The privacy conscious people won't do it? Then let them work on their own repositories and complain loudly about the idiot maintainer who puts these insane barriers. Then the maintainer can go take a look at that forks done by the loud compla…
How is it "laziness" to not want to pay $10 to submit a bug fix to your repository?
Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag
#187[flagged]
Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
> significant anti-human friction Yes, that friction is intentional . The lazy people don't want to do it? Great, there is very little chance their contributions are worthwhile. The privacy conscious people won't do it? Then let them work on their own repositories and complain loudly about the idiot maintainer who puts these insane barriers. Then the maintainer can go take a look at that forks done by the loud compla…
How is it "laziness" to not want to pay $10 to submit a bug fix to your repository?
1) I just used the term lazy because that's what OP use.
2) You are not "paying" $10. The money would be returned to you. In case you haven't heard of Pfand systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation
Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Repos get forked, code gets pushed, all before a PR is created. What kind of measures can be implemented to cut down on the AI-general forks and pushes?
You can fork and push all you want. The problem is specifically when you show up in my notifications with your junk PR.
The issue for GH isn’t your PR spam. It’s all the other operations before your PR spam ever arrives.
Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag
#190[flagged]
We’re currently working on a feature that lets admins archive PRs. The goal is to give maintainers more control over how they manage contributions in their repositories. Archived PRs would be visible to admins only, so maintainers still have access to contributor history for auditing purposes and to meet any organizational or compliance requirements. Would this be helpful for you?
Not OP but requested this feature since years.
Your suggestion would help a bit but I would prefer the opposite: before someone can 'pollute' my pull request space and draw attention from subscribers I would prefer an acceptance step (just like a moderator on a forum) instead of having to archive the PRs.
This is especially important as (AI) spam increases and just because I am away for a few days or weeks I don't want those PRs lurking around.