@timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works
Post #1873622
2026-04-25 02:34 UTC
Replies (4)
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@darklamer@feddit.org 2026-04-25 04:42
This remains a great mystery to me. As far as I can see, all they achieve is to waste time and resources for everyone involved, including themselves, without creating anything of value to anyone. It’s truly baffling.
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@SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 2026-04-25 05:51
The people doing this feel like it was their doing because they control the machine basically. This craving to produce something is strong in the ones who have no skills of their own. That’s why these PRs only ever come from absolutely incompetent buffoons.
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@alyth@lemmy.world 2026-04-26 09:41
Maybe to pad their resume
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@AeonFelis@lemmy.world 2026-04-26 13:19
Anecdote: there is this annual event called Hacktoberfest for promoting OSS contribution. It offers various merchandise as reward for PRs that get merged as part of the event. A few years back, someone posted a YouTube video trying to promote the event, and demonstrated how to to create a PR by going to some repository and adding some arbitrary text to the README. What he wanted to convey: “this is the procedure for sending contributions” What people understood: “you can win a free t-shirt by making small changes to non-code text” The result: joel.net/how-one-guy-ruined-hacktoberfest2020-dra… LLMs did not create this problem. The desire to make bullshit contributions in order to be seen as contributing seems to a basic human need. At least - for some humans. Generative AI did make it so much worse, though, because it’s so good at bullshitting that you have to waste time and spend mental resources in order to recognize the bullshit.