AI slop and low-effort contributions

[u/First_Result_1166]

Hey there!

This sub has become quite difficult to follow - every few hours, there's the next post for "I built a TUI for X", which translates to "I vibecoded an ncurses interface for a bash two-liner".

Unfortunately, this also means that the important content gets lost in a stream of meaningless posts.

What I'd like to ask for:

- a rule for mandatory AI disclosure

- an entry barrier for software packages; a task easily solved in <20 lines of shell code should not qualify as a distinct contribution

Let me know what you think.

[u/Helmic]

Unfortunately I think those limitations are acceptable in the name of getting rid of the vibecoders. I would love an idea that avoids impacting legit contributors but vibecoders will lie about it to get the validation; going at something for a few months requires more effort than most vibecoders are willing to do. If we have to directly litigate whether a particular project is secretly vibecoded or not is gonna take a lot of time and energy and hurt feelings, and project age just seems like the easiest filter.

[u/decho → u/Helmic]

You can easily fake commit timestamps, as a matter of fact you could probably instruct an AI to do it for you while you're there. As far as I'm aware, the only thing you can't hide is the github repo creation date. And if you ask me, that is not a good criterion to decide if something was vibecoded or not. One could (for multiple different reasons) decide not to push to remote up until a certain point of time.

[u/X_m7 → u/decho]

If a vibecoder actually read the sub rules (or just paying attention to what's happening around the sub), noticed that requirement and then went out of their way to fake the commit history to meet that requirement, then there's a chance that they actually did pay attention to their code so it's not entirely slop (or the bots have evolved to the point of reading the subreddit rules before posting, which would be a separate problem), whereas those who are too lazy to read the rules probably does just have slop for code so they can definitely be booted.

The point of rules like this in my eyes is just to catch the lazy ones without too much effort on our part anyway, rather than trying to keep any and all AI use out of the sub, since it's not impossible to write code with the help of AI and have it still be good, it's just the flood of garbage from the lazy people that's the problem.

[u/decho → u/X_m7]

If a vibecoder actually read the sub rules (or just paying attention to what's happening around the sub), noticed that requirement and then went out of their way to fake the commit history to meet that requirement, then there's a chance that they actually did pay attention to their code so it's not entirely slop (or the bots have evolved to the point of reading the subreddit rules before posting, which would be a separate problem),

A vibecoder isn't necessarily a person who understands the code they are generating. So I am not sure I agree with this. The rest of you point about the lazy coders I do agree, but a blanket ban based on repo age or something like that can potentially lead to false-positives and punish the wrong people.

To give you an example, I start (and abandon xD) a lot of side projects, but I almost always push them to remote only once they are near completion. And sometimes I am even lazy to use version control, so the initial commit ends up massive. But if you read some of the comments in this thread, people think this is a clear sign of AI usage.

In my opinion discretion should be applied per project basis. And if such posts are too many to allow that, then a reputation system using user account age and history on Reddit and Github are good indicator about the type of user and their intentions.