18 points•maxcr•7 days ago•21 comments•

21 comments

rwiggins7 days ago
It's certainly bad form to turn a GitHub reply into a blog post(?). (Disclosure: I only saw the commit refs that say "blog post", that appear to be a reply.)

As a maintainer (but not on this project), I feel an implicit (professional) responsibility to carefully review PRs, especially from random people. And as a profession, we know it's often harder to read code than it is to write it. This goes double for LLM code, which sometimes lacks a coherent mental model.

So in general, the asymmetry of "I did very little work here, but I'd like you to spend your time carefully reviewing it nonetheless" can be very annoying.

But to talk about specifics: this PR's description is mostly a waste of time. The first section is a pure duplication of the diff. If I wanted before/after code blocks, I'd click the "Files Changed" tab. Ditto for "Docs-only: 4 insertions, 1 deletion, docs/graph.md only. No change to the player bundle, layout or any other page." - yeah, I can see that in the diff, thanks. (Well, that's what it was in the original diff, before the follow-up changes.)

The testing and AI disclosure sections are similarly overly verbose. I don't need commentary on the policy, nor do I need a statement permitting me to reject the PR.

As an outsider, yeah, my reaction is pretty negative. I'd much prefer a description like "Fixes #3224. Migrated from v2 asciinema-player to v3 AsciinemaPlayer.create, as described in v2 to v3 migration guide [link]. Tested locally as best I could."

A maintainer needing to ask to migrate the other v2 uses isn't a great look, either. The follow-up "fixed the other 5" comment could simply end at "fixed the other 5", without all of the nonsense afterward.

I have to wonder whether all of this truly saved anyone time.

AnodicElegy7 days ago
Your PR comment was clearly written by an LLM and you used it to advertise your platform. I think the user calling for your ban made a reasonable point:

"The project and the bug were co-opted into an 100% automated flow without asking permission. It forced you to detect and intervene in order to get a human to pay attention. Your [sic] were forced to dedicate human time, while they could choose whether to or not. That's exactly the unsustainable asymmetry that should be renounced."

skeledrew7 days ago
The project owner accepted the contribution after a bit of back and forth and moved on. Others need to acknowledge that and take themselves elsewhere if they don't agree. Enough with the negativity in other people's spaces.
maxcr7 days ago
[flagged]
dang7 days ago
Can you please not post AI-generated or AI-edited comments to HN? It's not allowed here - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079.

Of course, it's impossible to know for sure what was LLM processed or not, but some of your posts (like this one) have been getting classified that way.

7bees7 days ago
You used their project to self-promote your site, in a way that someone perceived as violating their AI policy, and now you're using that trivial slight to cry here for attention so that you can further try to self-promote your site, using the account that you use solely to self-promote your site. You seemingly posted multiple blog posts about this non-incident, also to try to self-promote your site.

Please consider that other people are human beings and not just NPCs that exist to help you make money.

ronnier7 days ago
I have some open source code that’s used a lot in a certain area. I’ve been busy with work and am behind in maintaining it. Someone using AI has come along and fixed an enormous amount of bugs and implemented feature requests. It’s completely AI and I’m 100% fine with it. It solves real problems that I otherwise had no time for. I’m thankful for this person doing this.
greenavocado7 days ago

  It forced you to detect and intervene in order to get a human to pay attention. Your were forced to dedicate human time, while they could choose whether to or not. That's exactly the unsustainable asymmetry that should be renounced.

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

Related stories