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Who's upvoting this garbage? A poorly coded bot submitted some bad pull requests and this is news?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
I upvoted because this isn't the only bot, it's a big public example of a trend I've seen. We've had two different new hires try to set up Slack bots with autoresponse complaints whenever someone says "guys", and now I know it's not just some weird idea they both happened to have.
- tomlockwood 5y ago
  You know one of the reasons you see the "trend" is people keep upvoting tiny things like this.
  - cbg0 5y ago
    Those PRs are open whether we upvote this submission or not. Putting your head in the sand and pretending something isn't happening has never really worked, better to at least try to have some discourse.
    - tomlockwood 5y ago
      Is this poorly coded bot newsworthy, or even notable? Why?
      - vasco 5y ago
        Nobody knows, HN doesn't have an editor to ask. Much like the stock market nobody knows why stories get upvoted or not or stocks go up or down. The hivemind does what the hivemind does (with a caveat for astroturfing and brigading).
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    I do. It's a hard problem! How do you know when a new phenomenon crosses the line from "minor issue which probably means your attention's being hijacked if you're worried about it" to "big thing that needs to be argued against or everyone's gonna start doing it"? I don't have a great answer, other than to say that inclusive language bots subjectively feel to me like they're now in the second bucket. I'd bet $20 that within a decade some major tech company will implement inclusive language rules into every team's linter.
    - tomlockwood 5y ago
      And? Who cares? The linter won't letMeDoSnakeCase? I move on. Is this worth our time to complain about this and upvote to number ONE article on HN?
      - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
        I wouldn't argue that this is a tremendously impactful problem, but that's not what "top of HN" represents and doesn't mean that it's not worth our time. If you don't think language is an important topic, it won't really matter to you which side of this argument wins, and you can just kinda skip over it the same way I skip the hardware posts on the frontpage. If you do think language is an important topic, I think you should do some reflection on why that is, and how similar motivations might be driving people to feel it's important to argue against this kind of bot. It's easy to accidentally fall into an attitude where whatever things I personally don't mind are implicitly "neutral", and so anyone who argues against them must be looking for things to get mad about.
        tomlockwood 5y ago
        > If you don't think language is an important topic, This doesn't follow from anything I've said. > it's important to argue against this kind of bot. But is it? What's the magnitude of this problem?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - funcDropShadow 5y ago
    That is the reason that every social media site which has a like or upvote should also have a dislike or downvote. That way you can signal, that you have a reaction to it, but you don't want to spread it further.
    - tomlockwood 5y ago
      Unfortunately, many of these sites rely on ad revenue, and a hate watch with a dislike still provides ad revenue.
- gaws 5y ago
  > We've had two different new hires try to set up Slack bots with autoresponse complaints whenever someone says "guys", and now I know it's not just some weird idea they both happened to have. Why are new hires allowed to make bots on a company Slack server. Take away their privileges. Problem solved.
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    Well, why not? People deciding to code Slack bots on their own initiative has done a lot of good for us, and the problem was easily solved in both cases by removing the slack bots and (I've heard secondhand) a short private conversation about it. If we ever get to a point where leaders aren't willing to push back against a "guys" bot, presumably anyone who wants to build one would be able to get through whatever approval process could be put in place.
etchalon 5y ago
Ah, but you see it's something something Orwellian something something
outsb 5y ago
I upvoted it as a curiosity. The idea of a cultural agenda-signalling bot loose on GitHub actively breaking code and documentation sparks quite a few feelings. Some questions arise, such as whether or not any of the projects receiving contributions from the bot are improved in any material (technical, inclusiveness) way. It's quite common that absolutely the wrong thing gets done in the name of some noble cause, seems this is a fine example of that.
- tomlockwood 5y ago
  > I upvoted it as a curiosity. The idea of a cultural agenda-signalling bot loose on GitHub actively breaking code and documentation sparks quite a few feelings. How widespread and impactful is this problem?
  - xeromal 5y ago
    What specific information do you need? 1000 twitter accounts? An MIT study? I'm curious what you need to not be annoyed?
    - tomlockwood 5y ago
      I don't think 1k "twitter accounts" are going to reasonably prove anything, and I'm not sure a singular "MIT study" is either. Do you think those prove there's some impactful issue happening here?
gwbas1c 5y ago
Because it looks like an entertaining April Fool's day prank.
anonymousab 5y ago
It's a curiosity, it's funny, and it lightly touches on a modern theme/discussion around language and terminology in software development. Not every article/submission needs to be some big, serious new thing.
faridelnasire 5y ago
It's apparently already breaking a few people's compilers, check the 2nd comment on the PR.
- tomlockwood 5y ago
  If a bot that creates poorly conceived PRs can break someone's code they have bigger issues than any of the ones implied by the upvoting here.
  - secondcoming 5y ago
    It changed struct Simba { int father; int mother; }; into struct Simba { int parent; int parent; }; What 'bigger issue' is present here?
    - tomlockwood 5y ago
      Did that make it into any releases?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - joshspankit 5y ago
      I think OP meant that no one should be accepting PRs without reviewing them, and that a bad PR that’s simply submitted should not break anyone’s canonical code.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

I upvoted because this isn't the only bot, it's a big public example of a trend I've seen. We've had two different new hires try to set up Slack bots with autoresponse complaints whenever someone says "guys", and now I know it's not just some weird idea they both happened to have.

tomlockwood 5y ago
You know one of the reasons you see the "trend" is people keep upvoting tiny things like this.
- cbg0 5y ago
  Those PRs are open whether we upvote this submission or not. Putting your head in the sand and pretending something isn't happening has never really worked, better to at least try to have some discourse.
  - tomlockwood 5y ago
    Is this poorly coded bot newsworthy, or even notable? Why?
    - vasco 5y ago
      Nobody knows, HN doesn't have an editor to ask. Much like the stock market nobody knows why stories get upvoted or not or stocks go up or down. The hivemind does what the hivemind does (with a caveat for astroturfing and brigading).
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  I do. It's a hard problem! How do you know when a new phenomenon crosses the line from "minor issue which probably means your attention's being hijacked if you're worried about it" to "big thing that needs to be argued against or everyone's gonna start doing it"? I don't have a great answer, other than to say that inclusive language bots subjectively feel to me like they're now in the second bucket. I'd bet $20 that within a decade some major tech company will implement inclusive language rules into every team's linter.
  - tomlockwood 5y ago
    And? Who cares? The linter won't letMeDoSnakeCase? I move on. Is this worth our time to complain about this and upvote to number ONE article on HN?
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      I wouldn't argue that this is a tremendously impactful problem, but that's not what "top of HN" represents and doesn't mean that it's not worth our time. If you don't think language is an important topic, it won't really matter to you which side of this argument wins, and you can just kinda skip over it the same way I skip the hardware posts on the frontpage. If you do think language is an important topic, I think you should do some reflection on why that is, and how similar motivations might be driving people to feel it's important to argue against this kind of bot. It's easy to accidentally fall into an attitude where whatever things I personally don't mind are implicitly "neutral", and so anyone who argues against them must be looking for things to get mad about.
      - tomlockwood 5y ago
        > If you don't think language is an important topic, This doesn't follow from anything I've said. > it's important to argue against this kind of bot. But is it? What's the magnitude of this problem?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- funcDropShadow 5y ago
  That is the reason that every social media site which has a like or upvote should also have a dislike or downvote. That way you can signal, that you have a reaction to it, but you don't want to spread it further.
  - tomlockwood 5y ago
    Unfortunately, many of these sites rely on ad revenue, and a hate watch with a dislike still provides ad revenue.
gaws 5y ago
> We've had two different new hires try to set up Slack bots with autoresponse complaints whenever someone says "guys", and now I know it's not just some weird idea they both happened to have. Why are new hires allowed to make bots on a company Slack server. Take away their privileges. Problem solved.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  Well, why not? People deciding to code Slack bots on their own initiative has done a lot of good for us, and the problem was easily solved in both cases by removing the slack bots and (I've heard secondhand) a short private conversation about it. If we ever get to a point where leaders aren't willing to push back against a "guys" bot, presumably anyone who wants to build one would be able to get through whatever approval process could be put in place.

etchalon 5y ago

Ah, but you see it's something something Orwellian something something

outsb 5y ago

I upvoted it as a curiosity. The idea of a cultural agenda-signalling bot loose on GitHub actively breaking code and documentation sparks quite a few feelings. Some questions arise, such as whether or not any of the projects receiving contributions from the bot are improved in any material (technical, inclusiveness) way. It's quite common that absolutely the wrong thing gets done in the name of some noble cause, seems this is a fine example of that.

tomlockwood 5y ago
> I upvoted it as a curiosity. The idea of a cultural agenda-signalling bot loose on GitHub actively breaking code and documentation sparks quite a few feelings. How widespread and impactful is this problem?
- xeromal 5y ago
  What specific information do you need? 1000 twitter accounts? An MIT study? I'm curious what you need to not be annoyed?
  - tomlockwood 5y ago
    I don't think 1k "twitter accounts" are going to reasonably prove anything, and I'm not sure a singular "MIT study" is either. Do you think those prove there's some impactful issue happening here?

gwbas1c 5y ago

Because it looks like an entertaining April Fool's day prank.

anonymousab 5y ago

It's a curiosity, it's funny, and it lightly touches on a modern theme/discussion around language and terminology in software development. Not every article/submission needs to be some big, serious new thing.

faridelnasire 5y ago

It's apparently already breaking a few people's compilers, check the 2nd comment on the PR.

tomlockwood 5y ago
If a bot that creates poorly conceived PRs can break someone's code they have bigger issues than any of the ones implied by the upvoting here.
- secondcoming 5y ago
  It changed struct Simba { int father; int mother; }; into struct Simba { int parent; int parent; }; What 'bigger issue' is present here?
  - tomlockwood 5y ago
    Did that make it into any releases?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - joshspankit 5y ago
    I think OP meant that no one should be accepting PRs without reviewing them, and that a bad PR that’s simply submitted should not break anyone’s canonical code.