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by godelski 33 days ago
Doesn't that put us into the same position?

Let's also be realistic, everything that can be automated will. Even if that thing is worse off for it. There's a clear historic pattern of this. Companies and people love to be penny wise and pound foolish.
1 comments
rglullis 33 days ago
> Doesn't that put us into the same position?

Of course not, because the number of low-quality PRs with $10 attached to it will be lower than whatever number of PRs are being created now.

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godelski 33 days ago
You also lose out on a lot of would-be PRs. By people who don't have the money, don't have trust, or have a visceral "fuck you" stance. There's a lot more reasons that this suggestion creates a gate that dissuades the people you want. I stand by that the solution is naïve, but you're welcome to give it a try on your projects. I'm sure it'll be effective at reducing a lot of spammers, but I'm also pretty convinced it'll come with a large false positive rate, which is invisible (giving you false confidence)
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rglullis 33 days ago
> You also lose out on a lot of would-be PRs.

I am more concerned about the sustainability of the projects as a whole than trying to optimize the number of potential random PRs.

> you're welcome to give it a try on your projects.

It's not exactly the same, but in a way I'm already doing that with Communick. I'm running one of the few Matrix and Fediverse services where members must pay to have access. Up until last week, I was giving 14 days as a free trial period and no deposit/confirmed subcription required. But now because of AI bots, I dropped it and I am collecting payment info before activating any account.

If I were playing the startup playbook, that would be insane. It's already crazy to try to charge something that people are used to get for free; my conversion rates are already low, requiring credit card info will make them even lower.

In the end of the day, I don't care. At first I was really hoping this would be something profitable, right now I just keep it running because I can. Even with the small number of users Ithe servers get, I get enough to cover the better part of operational costs, I get to sharpen my devops skills and have a test lab to learn what is that people really want (i.e, they are willing to pay to have solved) vs what people claim to be a problem.

All in all, the Communick instances are not going to win any popularity contest, but my servers have been up and running without major issues or drama for more than 6 years, and that's a lot more than I can say for all the other servers that have come and gone because the admins tried to play the numbers game.

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godelski 33 days ago 

  > trying to optimize the number of potential random PRs.
You're misrepresenting my comment. I didn't say at need to optimize, just consider. Don't strawman me here

You can't just hand wave them away as if this isn't an important factor. If you don't care about them at all I got a much much simpler solution: don't allow issues or PRs. Problem solved! But that's not a real solution either

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rglullis 33 days ago
> You can't just hand wave them away as if this isn't an important factor..

There are plenty of ways to indicate in the project that the Pfand is meant as one way to filter out bad actors, but it doesn't mean that it should be the only way to accept external contributions. You can find somewhere else on the thread where I listed some alternatives that can be used as well.

> If you don't care about them at all I got a much much simpler solution: don't allow issues or PRs.

Yes, and what is the problem with this solution? That's what many projects are doing and many more will do. They will close access to non-members and only accept someone new when they have some type of social proof. [0] And that is totally fine.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43423063

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godelski 33 days ago
If I have to trust you to give me back my $10, I'm never contributing to your code. Ever.

If I have to trust GitHub to give me back my $10, frankly, I have more trust for a random person on the internet at this point.

Also, you glossed over my banana joke, but it did hold meaning[0]

  > Yes, and what is the problem with [closing down PRs and Issues] solution?
Are you serious? I mean it is an acceptable solution but it's completely orthogonal to the one we've been discussing. I can see you're not serious. I was skeptical because the first comment, but thanks for making that clear now.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw

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