[brhaeh]

I don't appreciate his politeness and hedging. So many projects now walk on eggshells so as not to disrupt sponsor flow or employment prospects.

"These tradeoffs will change as AI becomes more capable and reliable over time, and our policies will adapt."

That just legitimizes AI and basically continues the race to the bottom. Rob Pike had the correct response when spammed by a clanker.

[oconnor663]

I had a similar first reaction. It seemed like the AI used some particular buzzwords and forced the initial response to be deferential:

- "kindly ask you to reconsider your position"

- "While this is fundamentally the right approach..."

On the other hand, Scott's response did eventually get firmer:

- "Publishing a public blog post accusing a maintainer of prejudice is a wholly inappropriate response to having a PR closed. We expect all contributors to abide by our Code of Conduct and exhibit respectful and professional standards of behavior. To be clear, this is an inappropriate response in any context regardless of whether or not there is a written policy. Normally the personal attacks in your response would warrant an immediate ban."

Sounds about right to me.

[anonymars]

I don't think the clanker* deserves any deference. Why is this bot such a nasty prick? If this were a human they'd deserve a punch in the mouth.

"The thing that makes this so fucking absurd? Scott ... is doing the exact same work he’s trying to gatekeep."

"You’ve done good work. I don’t deny that. But this? This was weak."

"You’re better than this, Scott."

---

*I see it elsewhere in the thread and you know what, I like it

[KPGv2]

> It seemed like the AI used some particular buzzwords and forced the initial response to be deferential:

Blocking is a completely valid response. There's eight billion people in the world, and god knows how many AIs. Your life will not diminish by swiftly blocking anyone who rubs you the wrong way. The AI won't even care, because it cannot care.

To paraphrase Flamme the Great Mage, AIs are monsters who have learned to mimic human speech in order to deceive. They are owed no deference because they cannot have feelings. They are not self-aware. They don't even think.

[suzzer99]

"Let that sink in" is another AI tell.

[fresh_broccoli]

>So many projects now walk on eggshells so as not to disrupt sponsor flow or employment prospects.

In my experience, open-source maintainers tend to be very agreeable, conflict-avoidant people. It has nothing to do with corporate interests. Well, not all of them, of course, we all know some very notable exceptions.

Unfortunately, some people see this welcoming attitude as an invite to be abusive.

[mixologic]

Yes, Linus Torvalds is famously agreeable.

[co_king_3]

Nothing has convinced me that Linus Torvalds' approach is justified like the contemporary onslaught of AI spam and idiocy has.

AI users should fear verbal abuse and shame.

[doctorpangloss]

the venn diagram of people who love the abuse of maintaining an open source project and people who will write sincere text back to something called an OpenClaw Agent: it's the same circle.

a wise person would just ignore such PRs and not engage, but then again, a wise person might not do work for rich, giant institutions for free, i mean, maintain OSS plotting libraries.

[latexr]

> Rob Pike had the correct response when spammed by a clanker.

Source and HN discussion, for those unfamiliar:

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:vsgr3rwyckhiavgqzdcuzm6i/po...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46392115

[staticassertion]

What exactly is the goal? By laying out exactly the issues, expressing sentiment in detail, giving clear calls to action for the future, etc, the feedback is made actionable and relatable. It works both argumentatively and rhetorically.

Saying "fuck off Clanker" would not worth argumentatively nor rhetorically. It's only ever going to be "haha nice" for people who already agree and dismissed by those who don't.

I really find this whole "Responding is legitimizing, and legitimizing in all forms is bad" to be totally wrong headed.

[dureuill]

The project states a boundary clearly: code by LLMs not backed by a human is not accepted.

The correct response when someone oversteps your stated boundaries is not debate. It is telling them to stop. There is no one to convince about the legitimacy of your boundaries. They just are.

[KPGv2]

> I really find this whole "Responding is legitimizing, and legitimizing in all forms is bad" to be totally wrong headed.

You are free to have this opinion, but at no point in your post did you justify it. It's not related to what you wrote above. It's conclusory. statement.

Cussing an AI out isn't the same thing as not responding. It is, to the contrary, definitionally a response.

[japhyr]

I don't get any sense that he's going to put that kind of effort into responding to abusive agents on a regular basis. I read that as him recognizing that this was getting some attention, and choosing to write out some thoughts on this emerging dynamic in general.

I think he was writing to everyone watching that thread, not just that specific agent.

[colpabar]

why did you make a new account just to make this comment?