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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

#41

Post by janalsncm »

Larrikin wrote: post #35
ffaccount2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> there's very little evidence to support this opinion other than just wishing it was true

Building a brand doesn’t require submitting to someone else’s open source project. You can do the same thing by creating your own OSS project.

For a lot of them it’s probably a little of column A and a little of column B.

If people are submitting in their real name it’s more likely they’re building a brand. I also think it’s possible for someone to genuinely think they are helping without trying to build reputation.

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

#42

Post by janalsncm »

stackghost wrote: post #33
sureglymop wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are so many leetcode questions where solving it requires knowing some trick. Part of the trap for SWEs is that once you know the trick you feel smarter, but it really has nothing to do with software engineering.

Now that Claude is the best leetcoder in the world it would be great if companies which intend to hire humans would reconsider asking such dumb questions.

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

#44

Post by SoftTalker »

morkalork wrote: post #11
fecal_henge wrote: post #5

Can I ask what the motive is to create agents to do this? Where is the profit?

Every single job application form that has a field for your github profile is at fault for this. Juniors trying to break into the industry are trying very hard to check every box.

I've never asked for or looked at anyone's github or personal code as part of a job interview. Too easy to fake, and too much risk that it's something proprietary that could put me in a bad spot.

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

#45

Post by janalsncm »

I understand this is a general problem in OSS, but I also hope the irony isn’t lost that this article is specifically complaining about AI slop PRs to the Open Claw repo.

If the maintainers are that tired of it, they should update OpenClaw to prevent it from submitting PRs to their repo.

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

#47

Post by dormento »

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 implemented a feature or fixed a bug for the community!

yeah but, did they really?

All IMHO of course, but:

If they understand what they did, it follows that they understand someone has to approve/disapprove that contribution for it to land in the repo, and therefore, size their contributions accordingly to make reviewers lives easier.

If they do not understand what they did, they should not be attempting to land high-value high-complexity contributions yet; they should start with something smaller precisely so they can learn.

Edit: I realize I probably sound too grumpy about it, its just that they could be doing it in their own project, in their own repo, where they're free to go for anything they are comfortable with.

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

#48

Post by slaymaker1907 »

janalsncm wrote: post #42
stackghost wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

There are so many leetcode questions where solving it requires knowing some trick. Part of the trap for SWEs is that once you know the trick you feel smarter, but it really has nothing to do with software engineering. Now that Claude is the best leetcoder in the world it would be great if companies which intend to hire humans would reconsider asking such dumb questions.

I've personally started focusing a lot more on code quality and communication skills over correctness of solving some leetcode problem. If I could get the infrastructure in place for it in the interview, I would have candidates generate something via AI and watch their process for that (how do they evaluate a plan, how do they review the code, etc.).

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

#49

Post by andix »

I see one big difference: with email it was always about sender reputation based on email servers (IPs), maybe about domains. But never about individual users. It's the organizations running the email server, who make sure users behave. So they don't get blacklisted and lose sending privileges for hundreds or thousands of users.

For PRs/issues this is not applicable.

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

#50

Post by Exoristos »

thewebguyd wrote: post #39
ffaccount2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

So they're not just selfish, but delusional.
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