Thread

1. 0x69420 · 1789571110 · focus · HN ↗

   now imagine how many other devs and maintainers are contemplating this but just haven't been pushed to their personal breaking point yet. or take note of how many, when asked about the spam problem, just nervously go "yeah it's kinda rough haha...". or how many will vent about it on their twitter-like of choice with increasing frequency.

   remember hacktoberfest 2020? that's just all public-facing source 365 days a year now, except instead of "updated README.md" it's some vaguely-plausible fix... then you read the PR body and someone couldn't even be bothered to, or, just as likely couldn't explain it themselves. and that sort of sinking dread sets in.

   1. ssl-3 · 1789572285 · focus · HN ↗

      > now imagine how many other devs and maintainers are contemplating this but just haven't been pushed to their personal breaking point yet. or take note of how many, when asked about the spam problem, just nervously go "yeah it's kinda rough haha..."

      At first, my brain parsed "spam" as in ye olde email spam. It took a moment for it to sink in that you meant code spam, instead.

      But now that the two concepts are linked in my little pea brain: I kind of want to see how a system like SpamAssassin would work when applied to pull requests like it has been applied to email.

      It can use reputation, real-time blacklists, triggers for form, and et cetera, with weighted scores for every aspect that are ultimately factored into one final score.

      If final score is passing, the PR is presented for a human to review like a PR was (say) 5 years ago. If the final score fails, it goes into the circular file where it will probably die.

      1. jeremyjh · 1789572939 · focus · HN ↗

         There are reputation and vouch systems but there is definitely room for innovation; I don’t think there is any clear leader.
      2. BrtByte · 1789574702 · focus · HN ↗

         The funny part is that we'd probably recreate the entire email spam arms race

         1. ssl-3 · 1789576639 · focus · HN ↗

            That's OK. Maybe it's even inevitable.

            I've been on both sides of the spam arms race at different times of my life. While they'll never be able to claim victory, the good guys (usually!) seem to be winning -- and that's a lot better than accepting defeat.

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