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Vouch

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Re: Vouch

#471

Post by everforward »

theredbeard wrote: post #411

OSS was already brutal for new contributors before AI. You'd spend hours on a good-faith PR and get ignored for months, or get torn apart in review because you didn't know the unwritten conventions. The signal-to-noise ratio sucked but at least maintainers would eventually look at your stuff. Now with AI-generated spam everywhere, maintainers have even more reason to be suspicious of unknown names. Vouch solves their…

This makes sense to me. Part of me wonders if this system wouldn't work better in reverse, a blocklist instead of a banlist. Blocklists can spread via URL, in the same way that DNS or email blocklists work. Subscribe to the blocklists of people you trust.

I _think_ this removes the motivation for low-quality PRs. Get on a major blocklist and the GitHub account is basically dead. People could make new GitHub accounts, but then you never get an "impressive" GitHub account.

Re: Vouch

#472

Post by bccdee »

sbr464 wrote: post #309

I think a system that allows a reason someone is denounced, specifically for political views or support, should be implemented, to block the mob from denouncing someone on all of their projects, simply because they are against certain topics, or in an opposing political party

1. Such a system is already in place (see the `--reason` flag).

2. Being able to denounce people with noxious political views is a feature, not a bug. If someone shows up in your issues complaining about how your CoC is "woke," they're a bad actor stirring up pointless drama. At best, this is just a waste of everyone's time, and at worst they're haranguing your actual contributors who happen to be trans or something. Respectful contributors naturally will not fall afoul of this, regardless of their beliefs or party affiliation or what-have-you.

Re: Vouch

#473

Post by mrguyorama »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #456
theredbeard wrote: post #411

OSS was already brutal for new contributors before AI. You'd spend hours on a good-faith PR and get ignored for months, or get torn apart in review because you didn't know the unwritten conventions. The signal-to-noise ratio sucked but at least maintainers would eventually look at your stuff. Now with AI-generated spam everywhere, maintainers have even more reason to be suspicious of unknown names. Vouch solves their…

Good filters make good communities. Back in the good ol' days of the internet, access to the internet in of itself was a decent filter: you had to want to be online, you needed to be somewhat technical, or at least willing to grapple with technical problems, and you needed to actively seek out communities online which aligned with your interests, and there was little financial motivation to do so in bad faith. As the…

>Back in the good ol' days of the internet, access to the internet in of itself was a decent filter: you had to want to be online, you needed to be somewhat technical, or at least willing to grapple with technical problems, and you needed to actively seek out communities online which aligned with your interests, and there was little financial motivation to do so in bad faith

And it was horrifically expensive to be online until the mid 90s, or late 90s depending on where you were.

Re: Vouch

#474

Post by bccdee »

otterley wrote: post #176

I'm reminded of the old Usenet responses to people claiming to solve the spam problem, so I can't help myself: Your solution advocates a ( ) technical (X) social ( ) policy-based ( ) forge-based approach to solving AI-generated pull requests to open source projects. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws.) ( ) PR…

This is a fun post. I think you're mistaken, though.

Your strongest point is that allowlists exclude new contributors. (You're right about blocklists, but this seems to me like a primarily allowlist-based approach.) Thing is, new contributors are already being excluded by a flood of slop PRs within which they are indistinguishable. Whatever strategy they would currently use to distinguish themselves (reaching out through social channels, volunteering in the issue for an important problem, etc) should still work with vouch. But when it does work and they are vouched for, they will get a reputational shortcut to contribute again in this repo and to contribute in other repos sharing the same vouchlist.

Like any good social solution, `vouch` is trying to codify & extend the existing ad-hoc practices that have arisen to cope with slop PRs (i.e. largely ignoring PRs submitted by strangers). Obviously it's not a full solution, but I'm suspicious of solutions that claim to fully solve a difficult problem. It's a step forward.

Re: Vouch

#475

Post by elxr »

poulpy123 wrote: post #419
weli wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1 might not be a lot to you, but in some countries that's the daily wage. Even in rich countries one dollar for some might be the difference between eating or not eating that day. Paywalling without any regional pricing consideration it's just going to incentivize people from poor countries to not participate in your project. Maybe that's okay for you but it's something to consider.

I don't like this idea but the people unable to afford $1 don't have time to propose PR

Plenty of teens in poorer countries actively devoting a lot of time to practicing programming. $1 is a lot for a PR.

Re: Vouch

#476

Post by habinero »

booleandilemma wrote: post #343
__float wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes political views should actually get you shunned. You're always free to create a fork.

Please tell us the correct political views we should have, or at least provide a list of the political views that will result in a shunning.

You know exactly the ones they're talking about.

The ones you're not willing to say with your whole chest in public because you know what everyone will think about you.

Either have the courage of your own convictions or have shame, you pick.

Re: Vouch

#477

Post by Loughla »

jcattle wrote: post #373
Loughla wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ones I've never understood are: Prompt payment. Great buyer. I can't check out unless I pay. How is that feedback?

On auctions, you do not have to provide a payment method to bid. So once you won an auction you still have to pay the agreed price. Only after the buyer paid, does the seller get the shipment address. Depending on the buyer this can take longer or shorter (or won't happen at all).

That actually makes a lot of sense. Thank you for explaining that. I legitimately didn't consider auctions.

Re: Vouch

#478

Post by WhiteOwlLion »

What about HashCash, where proof of work increases with more pull requests from a user ID? Beyond typical submission frequency, proof-of-work would become exponentially more difficult to prevent spam, helping to keep the riff-raff out.

Doesn't require money, just computing power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

If HiveCoin were still around, we could donate the hashing power to some tech-related non-profit.

Re: Vouch

#479

Post by fragmede »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #364
SJC_Hacker wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real problem is we don't have a low-friction digital payment system that allows individuals to automate sending payment requests for small amounts of money to each other without requiring everyone to sign up for a merchant account with a financial bureaucracy. Its called cryptocurrency

First you have to make it low-friction. If I want Joe Average to send me $1 in cryptocurrency, how is he getting $1 in cryptocurrency to send me?

There is no shortage of apps to do that these days. Venmo and CashApp are pretty mainstream for people in the US.

Re: Vouch

#480

Post by [deleted] »

habinero wrote: post #476
booleandilemma wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please tell us the correct political views we should have, or at least provide a list of the political views that will result in a shunning.

You know exactly the ones they're talking about. The ones you're not willing to say with your whole chest in public because you know what everyone will think about you. Either have the courage of your own convictions or have shame, you pick.

[deleted]
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