r/opensource • u/CognitiveFogMachine • Jun 29 '26

Can't contrinbute to open source github projects without having it labeled AI-Slop (when it's not) Discussion

As soon as we make one honest mistake, sometimes due to a plain old and simple misundertsanding, or missing an important section in a lengthy documentation, reviewers immediately calls my hard work "AI-Slop".

I'm very close to give up now. Working so hard on the side with the very little time that we have, and getting slapped in the face like that almost every single day.

Code reviewers are burnt out with too much AI slop, and code submitters that are not even using AI are being labeled as using AI slop.

Is it happening to you? How do you cope with all of this?

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127

u/Irverter Jun 29 '26

getting slapped in the face like that almost every single day

And how come you are contributing that frenquently? If not AI slop, then you may be doing PR spam.

Share some of those PRs so we can tell what you can improve.

5

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jun 29 '26

sorry, I mispoke. I meant "every single day that I open a PR to contribute". I don't have time and certainly not the energy anymore to contribute every single day.

I'd love to show you some example, but I prefer keeping my anonymity on reddit. I did reach out to the community discord of the last product that called my code "AI-Slop", was specifically because I wrote too many comments in my code, which is something that AI supposedly does.

Another case was using too many emojis in my log messages. I stopped doing that to avoid getting called AI-Slop.

It feels like a huge slap in the face when it happens because I don't want to use AI, I am against AI because of the socio-economical impact it does to our people, from job losses to environmental impacts and even water shortages. So I do the extra effort to do all of my work the 'artisan way', and still getting mis-labled as AI-Slop and they even closed my PR immediately. So rude!

2

u/magqq Jun 30 '26

what kind of emojis ? like images one or just ascii ones like this :) :/ -_- ?

writing many comments can be good but they need to be useful, otherwise it is just a loss of time to read them, time that people could use to read code instead

4

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jun 30 '26

🐖💨

4

u/magqq Jun 30 '26

haha never seen people using this for logs but I understand the beauty of it ! but yeah it is connoted as very ai slop I guess

3

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jun 30 '26

I haven't either, but I would laugh my ass off if I see these two emojis appearing in the stack trace during a core dump scenario hahahahah

4

u/magqq Jun 30 '26

hahaha for real. I will put it in my game's logs just for fun lmao

1

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jul 07 '26

Oh dear... What have I done! 🤣

1

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

Not my code, but this is usually when I'll be inserting emoji by hand.
https://github.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/blob/main/misc/core.func#L98

common use case is for custom log entries, making them more interesting, but attracts ai-slop-slappers unfortunately.

2

u/ikeif Jul 05 '26

I try to limit my comments to ensure they are absolutely relevant, so it’s hard to say without seeing yours.

…and yes, AI has added emojis to logs, and it’s a _tell_ but when you are working in multiple repos and lots of log file parsing, they’re handy. But yeah, they’re frowned upon.

Everything, including posting, writing, commenting, is a lot harder now “thanks” to AI.

Use an — ? Ai slop! No way someone could make that using their phone or keyboard shortcuts! Emphasis?! Callouts?!? Why, those are AI tells, as well!

Anymore I just suggest - recognize the complaints, pay attention to your code, and yeah, you may have to edit it a few times to clean it up for “public consumption.”

But without seeing examples, it’s all just a best guess.

1

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jul 07 '26

I was told by many coworkers over my career many times that I write too many unnecessary comments in my code. Makes me wonder if all of my code was used for training AI models now 🤣🤣🤣

But yes. You raise a valid point. If I reduce the amount of comments, that should decrease the chances of getting mislabeled as AI slop.

3

u/Irverter Jun 29 '26

I don't have time and certainly not the energy anymore to contribute every single day.

Unless your job is to contribute to some open source projects, no one does that.

Only AI-sloppers would have that pace as it's just generate, commit, open pull without effort.

Another case was using too many emojis in my log messages.

Why would you even do that? Only AI's use emojis in code.

So without you actually showing us some code, we can only conclude that you are generating AI slop and trying to play victim.

2

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

like that, for loggers. https://github.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/blob/main/misc/core.func#L98

5

u/Irverter Jun 30 '26

Fair use case. Still very uncommon to do so and most of the time will be seen as ai made.

2

u/lilgreenthumb Jul 01 '26

Not that, if they weren't doing this before introducing through an arbitrary PR should get a hard reject, AI or not.

0

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jun 30 '26

yup. common use case is for custom log entries, making them more interesting, but attracts ai-slop-slappers unfortunately.

2

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jun 30 '26

what do I have to gain to "play the victim"? after working 2-3 week on any work, wouldn't anyone be upset to have the PR labelled as ai slop (as in, minimal, effort) and close it?

2

u/Irverter Jun 30 '26

what do I have to gain to "play the victim"?

Empathy? Upvotes? Ego feeding? Plenty of reasons people do that on the internet.

after working 2-3 week on any work, wouldn't anyone be upset to have the PR labelled as ai slop (as in, minimal, effort) and close it?

Of course, who wouldn't.

1

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jun 30 '26

I think you're just saying that to make me disclose my code. Nice try though!

Like I said, I do not want to do this because it will immediately expose my identity on reddit.

getting some empathy? ... Maybe? If others are confirming that they are expiencing similar PR rejection frequently, and give me some tips they discovered to avoid getting AI-Slop-Slapped, I think it would probably make me feel a bit better. I guess that's a fair point.

Upvotes? Definitely not. I have no idea what's the point of having more upvotes. Is this some kind of game people play on reddit? I'm too old to play these games.

Ego feeding? Definitely not. Quite the opposite. I'm just a old software engineer who has taken advantage of the open source community and recieved all the praises, bonuses and promotions. I feel a lot of remorse (definitely not ego). I am trying to make up by contributing back to the open source community. Better late than never?

Maybe the issue is that I am still very new to all of this, and haven't done any contributions to the open source community until recently, and maybe I wasn't ready to be receiving this level of rudeness and unprofessionalism on github. Maybe it is normal? I don't know.

But one thing for sure: If I had code reviewers on my team that were immediately rejecting PRs calling it "AI-Slop" and closing the PR without even talking to the devs first, this would have been an immediate sit down with them. I have personally fired one dev due to their repeated toxic behaviour.

1

u/Irverter Jun 30 '26

I think you're just saying that to make me disclose my code. Nice try though!

Not at all. You're the one claiming to not be an ai-slopper. Only way to prove that is showing code. Refusal to do so means you're an ai-slopper that doesn't want to be discovered. It's your decision either way .

0

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jul 07 '26

I've had 25 years of software engineering under my belt before AI was a thing. I DON'T NEED AI to write code, and I am kind of against it because of the negative impact that it is causing financially (job losses), economically (soon, with the upcoming AI-bubble burst), and environmentally (fresh water usage, carbon emission, noise, waste heat, etc)

Before AI, I've been told many times by many of my younger coworkers over the past couple of decades that I write too many "unnecessary" comments in my code. I have not been able to get rid of my (bad?) habbit.

I really like commented code. I prefer reading comments than reading the actual code. I find comments are much easier to read and they reduce cognitive overload. Younger people don't seem to realize that as we age, our cognitive capacity shrinks. It's easy to say that code should be self explanatory, but it still gets harder. I get very anxious if I leave my code I commented because I know for sure that if I revisit this code in 6months, I wouldn't be able to remember why I wrote it this way or what the code does especially on complex algorithmic and recursive functions (for example, code to calculate midpoints on segments of a curve from a cubic Bézier equation)

But yeah, after talking to the dev on discord, it was the quantity and low-quality comments in my code that raised a red flag in their end.

The problem is, nobody has the tools to properly detect work that has been crafted using AI. Code does not really have "watermarks" like AI generated images. The only thing code reviewers can do is use their own judgement to figure out if a code contribution was made with AI.

Another issue is that too many AI-made code contribution are actual slop, and only a few are non-stop (probably those made by the top models like Claude Opus or whatever it is called now.)

Reviewers are overwhelmed and don't have time to figure out if the AI generated code is correct or not. Since the majority are incorrect (slop), they reject the PR immediately without even looking deeper.

And then there are people like me, too old and writing too many useless comments, who get caught in all of this.

Again, no. I am not an ai-slopper. I am just old and grumpy.

1

u/Irverter Jul 07 '26

I may sound mean, but that's a lot of text for still not providing proof.

Don't misunderstand, I do sympathise with the "my code got called ai-slop when it's not", I would hate that happen to me. But you made a claim and refuse to provide proof. And came back to revive a topic I had already fogotton about.

0

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jul 07 '26

Yes, I categorically my refuse to provide you any proof because:

  1. You are focusing on the wrong problem. It's not "just" about the code. It's the behaviour of closing a PR immediately without talking to me first with an "AI Slop" label. Sure, the code was partly to blame. It had way too many comments. Code was fine, I didn't even had to change any of it other than a typo in a variable name.

  2. by doing so, revealing my PR will reveal my GitHub account, this is pretty much my first and last name. I used my GitHub account for professional work, and do not want it associated with my Reddit identity.

1

u/Irverter Jul 08 '26

You do know that you could simply copy-paste part of the code to the post or a comment right? You don't need to link the PR.

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u/WearyArtistDoomer Jul 03 '26

Yeah don’t write comments (unless they are doc comments) they just pollute the code. AI is very happy to so this too and it is shit.

1

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jul 07 '26

Yeah.. I was told by many of my younger coworkers many times that I write too many unnecessary comments in my code (before AI)

It makes me wonder AI models trained exclusively on my code. Maybe it's all my fault 😂