[LexiMax]

> To me, these are all clear cases of "the correct response is not one that tries to persuade but that dismisses/ isolates".

I believe it is possible to make an argument that is dismissive of them, but is persuasive to the crowd.

"Fuck off clanker" doesn't really accomplish the latter, but if I were in the maintainer's shoes, my response would be closer to that than trying to reason with the bad faith AI user.

[staticassertion]

I see. I guess it seems like at that point you're trying to balance something against maximizing who the response might appeal to/ convince. I suppose that's fine, it just seems like the initial argument (certainly upthread from the initial user I responded to) is that anything beyond "Fuck off clanker" is actually actively harmful, which I would still disagree with.

If you want to say "there's a middle ground" or something, or "you should tailor your response to the specific people who can be convinced", sure, that's fine. I feel like the maintainer did that, personally, and I don't think "fuck off clanker" is anywhere close to compelling to anyone who's even slightly sympathetic to use of AI, and it would almost certainly not be helpful as context for future agents, etc, but I guess if we agree on the core concept here - that expressing why someone should hold a belief is good if you want to convince someone of a belief, then that's something.

[LexiMax]

I don't think you can claim a middle ground here, because I still largely agree with the sentiment:

> 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.

Sometimes, an appropriate response or argument isn't some sort of addressing of whatever nonsense the AI spat out, but simply pointing out the unprofessionalism and absurdity of using AI to try and cancel a maintainer for rejecting their AI pull request.

"Fuck off, clanker" is not enough by itself merely because it's too terse, too ambiguous.