[stackghost]

>And telling maintainers how to act will not fix anything.

Indeed. For too long, maintainers were expected to be gracious, courteous, and polite at all costs lest they be labeled "problematic", except for a few who were too influential to be muzzled like Theo de Raadt or Linus.

Perhaps we need to normalize bullying people who submit obvious slop as PRs.

[fc417fc802]

No, you absolutely should be gracious, courteous, and polite. But only at first. The duty of maintaining a functional community doesn't mean you're obligated to suffer unlimited abuse.

[account42]

You can be if you want to but social skills should not be a requirement to lead an open source project. If you create something and share it that doesn't oblige you to even respond to anyone.

[fc417fc802]

Of course, a hobbyist putting his code out there is under no obligation whatsoever. But we aren't talking about small time hobbyists here. These are professionals who are either paid as part of their job or else contribute their spare time to maintain important projects that are part of a large ecosystem that is relied on. There's a community and it necessarily has behavioral standards as part of the shared goal of maintaining group cohesion.

[jrochkind1]

There is no reason you can't be gracious, courteous and polite while refusing to accept or even to review the PR. These things are not tied together. You can also refuse to be bullied by submitters, stop engaging altogether. But bullying is part of the problem, not the solution, normalizing bullying is the wrong direction and will not result in more secure code.

[stackghost]

>There is no reason you can't be gracious, courteous and polite while refusing to accept or even to review the PR.

I agree, and I never suggested we cannot do these things.

I'm saying we should normalize immediately telling people who submit obvious AI slop to fuck right off. Submitting AI slop pull requests is rude. It is disrespectful of the maintainer's time and energy. I see no reason why I or anyone else should be respectful of someone who has already demonstrated a lack of reciprocal respect by submitting a vibe-coded PR that they obviously haven't even read or tested.

Respect must be earned.

[jrochkind1]

Because encouraging a culture of disrespect and bullying is actually bad for security not good for it. Politely decline, please, no need to be rude because of your (not always guaranteed to be correct) perception of where someone (or some thing!) is coming from.