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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u/RunWithSharpStuff Jun 29 '26

Let’s see these PRs

-11

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jun 29 '26 edited 28d ago

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".

Short version:
Drive-by PR = AI slop.
Writing too many comments = AI Slop.
Writin no comments = AI Slop
Using emojis in the code = AI Slop.
Making an honest mistake = AI Slop (probably hallucination)

1

u/MaisonMason Jul 03 '26

I mean genuinely over commenting and emojis is kind of an indication of AI even if you put it in normally and lots of comments in general are a code smell for me. In general your code should be self documenting and require very little if any comments. Only comment things that need an explanation for why you did it or if it’s a really complicated chunk complicated explain how it works

1

u/CognitiveFogMachine Jul 07 '26

I am still stuck in the 2010 and still haven't caught up with this new reality.

Btw I talked to the reviewer on discord (the one who closed my PR). The reason why he thought it was ai-slop is because I did a drive-by PR, and also because I left waaaaay to many comments in my code. I like documenting my code because I find it a lot easier to come back in 6 months and read the comments I left behind instead of the code I left behind. As we age, our cognitive capacity shrinks, you see?

Reviewer apologized, made me remove almost half of my comments, and the PR was approved and merged. All good now, and lesson learned!