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by cautiouscat 19 days ago
That’s Apples to Oranges. Me saying “Co-authored by Joe Smith” gives the human, Joe Smith, possible exposure and definite credit.

“Co-authored by Copilot” gives a multi billion dollar corp free advertising. I don’t care about them. I do care about Joe though.

3 comments

Knowing it was Copilot vs Claude vs ChatGPT makes a difference just like knowing it was Joe Smith vs John Doe
It really doesn't. Same as we don't say "written with vi" or "written by Emacs", even if it is intuitively clear one of the two is better.
I don't know why dylan604 is trying to die on this hill but thats the point, you can't tell apart people using different tools, everybody has their own preferences.

Case in point, I have no way to know if dylan604 is even a real human at this point.

I'm much more believable as a human than an account made 38 days ago :face-palm:
Here's a bit of self-awareness you can take away from our conversation: We can't read your mind and neither can you.
Just like how you know that Brawndo™ is the different, better version of the pedestrian "water" that everyone drinks.

How could it possibly be product placement? It's got electrolytes!

Positive credit is not the only purpose of attribution.

There's also the named authors not taking credit for something they didn't fully do, regardless of whether the credit goes to someone else.

There's also traceability, if the authors/provenance needs to be considered because of some kind of problem or potential problem -- technical, legal, security, or otherwise.

> There's also the named authors not taking credit for something they didn't fully do

Advertising in git commits is not ever going to substantially discredit these people or hold them accountable.

Your caring about the entity cited doesn't actually change the nature of the citation. Your saying "Co-authored by Copilot" does the same thing--gives Copilot possible exposure and definite credit--even if it doesn't need it and you don't care about it.