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1. skeete+vz1[view] [source] 2026-02-08 18:24:08
>>chwtut+(OP)
Doesn't this just shift the same hard problem from code to people? It may seem easier to assess the "quality" of a person, but I think there are all sorts of complex social dynamics at play, plus far more change over time. Leave it to us nerds to try and solve a human problem with a technical solution...
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2. mjr00+TB1[view] [source] 2026-02-08 18:39:54
>>skeete+vz1
> Leave it to us nerds to try and solve a human problem with a technical solution...

Honestly, my view is that this is a technical solution for a cultural problem. Particularly in the last ~10 years, open source has really been pushed into a "corporate dress rehearsal" culture. All communication is expected to be highly professional. Talk to everyone who opens an issue or PR with the respect you would a coworker. Say nothing that might offend anyone anywhere, keep it PG-13. Even Linus had to pull back on his famously virtiolic responses to shitty code in PRs.

Being open and inclusive is great, but bad actors have really exploited this. The proper response to an obviously AI-generated slop PR should be "fuck off", closing the PR, and banning them from the repo. But maintainers are uncomfortable with doing this directly since it violates the corporate dress rehearsal kayfabe, so vouch is a roundabout way of accomplishing this.

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3. zbentl+JK1[view] [source] 2026-02-08 19:36:49
>>mjr00+TB1
What on earth makes you think that denouncing a bot PR with stronger language would deter it? The bot does not and cannot care.

If that worked, then there would be an epidemic of phone scammers or email phishers having epiphanies and changing careers when their victims reply with (well deserved) angry screeds.

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4. mjr00+mP1[view] [source] 2026-02-08 20:05:56
>>zbentl+JK1
I didn't mean the "fuck off" part to be quite verbatim... this ghostty PR[0] is a good example of how this stuff should be handled. Notably: there's no attempt to review or provide feedback--it's instantly recognized as a slop PR--and it's an instant ban from repo.

This is the level of response these PRs deserve. What people shouldn't be doing is treating these as good-faith requests and trying to provide feedback or asking them to refactor, like they're mentoring a junior dev. It'll just fall on deaf ears.

[0] https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/pull/10588

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5. zozbot+gR1[view] [source] 2026-02-08 20:18:01
>>mjr00+mP1
Sure, but that pull request is blatantly unreviewable because of how it bundles dozens of entirely unrelated commits together. Just say that and move on: it only takes a one-line comment and it informs potential contributors about what to avoid if any of them is lurking the repo.
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6. jack_p+jT1[view] [source] 2026-02-08 20:33:25
>>zozbot+gR1
One problem with giving any feedback is that it can automatically be used by an agent to make another PR.
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7. zozbot+GX1[view] [source] 2026-02-08 21:04:45
>>jack_p+jT1
If they immediately make another low-quality PR that's when you ban them because they're clearly behaving like a bad actor. But providing even trivial, boilerplate feedback like that is an easy way of drawing a bright line for contributors: you're not going to review contributions that are blatantly low-quality, and that's why they must refrain from trying to post raw AI slop.
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