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We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag

archestra.ai

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Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag

#81

Post by hoistbypetard »

rglullis wrote: post #63

'I will take "problems that could be easily be solved by implementing a Pfand system" for $200, Alex.' Seriously. Just ask for a US$10 deposit for the each PR. If the PR is accepted (not even merged, just accepted as "this is a good effort"), give it back. Hell, give double the amount for good effort and you got yourself a cheap way to attract good contributors. Best case, bots will balk at the payment. Worst case, t…

I semi-regularly offer drive-by PRs to projects I like and use. They're real PRs, not generated with AI. They range from papercuts to doc fixes to attempts to add that one feature that I want. Sometimes it's a drive-by group of PRs. Or an issue and a PR. I try to conform to what the maintainers prefer.

Unless I knew the maintainers personally, this would prevent most of my contributions, which are most often accepted. Maybe it's worth losing out on my small contributions to avoid slop. But things would absolutely be lost this way.

Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag

#82

Post by applfanboysbgon »

rglullis wrote: post #63

'I will take "problems that could be easily be solved by implementing a Pfand system" for $200, Alex.' Seriously. Just ask for a US$10 deposit for the each PR. If the PR is accepted (not even merged, just accepted as "this is a good effort"), give it back. Hell, give double the amount for good effort and you got yourself a cheap way to attract good contributors. Best case, bots will balk at the payment. Worst case, t…

This is an evergreen internet comment right here. Condescendingly proclaiming "This problem could be easily solved by [significantly worse solution that had 1/10th the thought put into it as the actual solution by people with a stake in actually solving the problem rather than making quippy armchair comments]".

---

I know it's against convention to comment on downvotes, but really? Really? This is controversial? The OP came up with an elegant solution that cleanly solved their problem without subjecting contributors to anything more than a captcha. Then somebody comes along and says "oh, it's so easy, just charge $10". You're going to set up payment infrastructure, incur administrative overhead with human support managing refunds, and deter 99% of actual humans from contributing, and then call that the easy solution that OP is so stupid for not thinking of first? Give me a fucking break. This site really is just Reddit-lite, anyone who thinks about engineering problems seriously would realise this does not stand up as anything beyond a pithy internet solution with three seconds of thought into what actually implementing it would entail.

Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag

#83

Post by hoistbypetard »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #73
rglullis wrote: post #63

'I will take "problems that could be easily be solved by implementing a Pfand system" for $200, Alex.' Seriously. Just ask for a US$10 deposit for the each PR. If the PR is accepted (not even merged, just accepted as "this is a good effort"), give it back. Hell, give double the amount for good effort and you got yourself a cheap way to attract good contributors. Best case, bots will balk at the payment. Worst case, t…

This is exactly the strategy that the owner of the SomethingAwful forum used in 2004 to get rid of bots and assholes. (I used to remember his name, kinda famous, oh well).

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

Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag

#84

Post by fullstop »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #73
rglullis wrote: post #63

'I will take "problems that could be easily be solved by implementing a Pfand system" for $200, Alex.' Seriously. Just ask for a US$10 deposit for the each PR. If the PR is accepted (not even merged, just accepted as "this is a good effort"), give it back. Hell, give double the amount for good effort and you got yourself a cheap way to attract good contributors. Best case, bots will balk at the payment. Worst case, t…

This is exactly the strategy that the owner of the SomethingAwful forum used in 2004 to get rid of bots and assholes. (I used to remember his name, kinda famous, oh well).

Lowtax, I think is what you're looking for.

Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag

#86

Post by godelski »

rglullis wrote: post #63

'I will take "problems that could be easily be solved by implementing a Pfand system" for $200, Alex.' Seriously. Just ask for a US$10 deposit for the each PR. If the PR is accepted (not even merged, just accepted as "this is a good effort"), give it back. Hell, give double the amount for good effort and you got yourself a cheap way to attract good contributors. Best case, bots will balk at the payment. Worst case, t…

This sounds like a great idea until you think about it for more than 30 seconds. Similar to most "it's so easy, you just" ideas.

Seriously, chill, then think about how you'd implement it. Then think how it'd go wrong. Then think about how to fix those problems. Repeat until you realize there's a better solution or until you solve the problem without making it overly convoluted. More often than not the former is the better option. More often the latter is just a variant of the sunk cost fallacy and your ego. Reality is (un)surprisingly complex and solutions aren't usually trivial

Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag

#87

Post by smaudet »

hoistbypetard wrote: post #81
rglullis wrote: post #63

'I will take "problems that could be easily be solved by implementing a Pfand system" for $200, Alex.' Seriously. Just ask for a US$10 deposit for the each PR. If the PR is accepted (not even merged, just accepted as "this is a good effort"), give it back. Hell, give double the amount for good effort and you got yourself a cheap way to attract good contributors. Best case, bots will balk at the payment. Worst case, t…

I semi-regularly offer drive-by PRs to projects I like and use. They're real PRs, not generated with AI. They range from papercuts to doc fixes to attempts to add that one feature that I want. Sometimes it's a drive-by group of PRs. Or an issue and a PR. I try to conform to what the maintainers prefer. Unless I knew the maintainers personally, this would prevent most of my contributions, which are most often accepted…

Agreed... However there's not a good IsThisAnAI() test at present. So unfortunately, we will have to use anti-spammer techniques (because that is exactly what AI is, high(er) quality spam).

Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag

#88

Post by jagged-chisel »

aizk wrote: post #47

I'm not sure why gh hasn't already implemented stricter measures / filters / tools for PRs. It would cut down on spam and also help save their servers that can't handle the increased AI load!

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?

Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag

#89

Post by JimBlackwood »

arecsu wrote: post #16

Makes me wonder if an ELO-based system would work to mitigate these issues. People who merged PR successfully onto a project, that had real issues acknowledged, the quality of their responses measured by other users reactions or something, etc, multiplied possibly by the degree of importance of the project where their activity has been made. Won't be about human vs AI, but actual helpful effective being vs low effort…

Sounds a bit like Mitchell Hashimoto’s Vouch: https://github.com/mitchellh/vouch

Re: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag

#90

Post by smaudet »

rtdq wrote: post #77
rglullis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Once a PR is rejected, contact from that bot is blocked. No appeals.

The worst case is that someone loses out on $10, no? How does this work if the maintainer is the swindler?

I don't think that is a (very realistic) concern. AI is slop, the problem is not that the real contributors are struggling to get PRs merged.

The bigger issue being, raising the bar to students who may have otherwise had productive careers (but education is a general issue, where the students don't even yet recognize they are being scammed).

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