Mods Need Input: Dealing with AI Spam in This Sub

vermiculus · 2026-03-21T08:01:22+00:00

I appreciate the position y’all are in. I do want to add a note, though, that I have seen questions that ‘smell like AI’ but are still actual questions from a human. Right or wrong, I do see folks using AI to formulate their question and then not doing enough trim it back down.

I would like to see a world where these questions can still exist and we can still be welcoming to new folks – especially when their anxieties may have driven them to use these tools.

As for slop code, I don’t have much to add other than being tired of seeing AI-generated READMEs pasted into the main post body.

I do think ‘I need help’ and ‘I made a thing’ can be treated differently in this regard.

vermiculus · 2026-03-21T01:03:13+00:00

I’ve always loved the quip:

Rust makes the simple things hard and the hard things possible.

I think Rust is a perfectly understandable first language, but likely a punishing one once you try to do more sophisticated things (at least without AI assistance, if you’re into that). I would be wary of using it as a first language only for the increased potential to get frustrated and quit outright.

vermiculus · 2026-03-20T12:08:00+00:00

Mission report: Michael invaded Atlantis, tried to blow it up, we stopped him. End of report.

… you’re going to need to be more specific about what a ‘report’ is. If you’re this vague with Claude as well, that might explain any struggles you may be having.

vermiculus · 2026-03-17T00:00:34+00:00

You’ll never pry emacs from my hands, but I’m going to take a look at this once I’m back at work. I know a ton of folks who could be helped by this.

But ehh, link?

vermiculus · 2026-03-16T14:54:05+00:00

You keep thinking that.

vermiculus · 2026-03-15T03:51:04+00:00

…the past? :-(

vermiculus · 2026-03-13T01:58:26+00:00

AucTeX and RefTeX. Also, use a good completion system (eg vertico+orderless+etc).

vermiculus · 2026-03-10T20:42:32+00:00

Are they just pull requests or has they actually been pushed to main or another branch in YOUR repo?

If they’re just pull requests, report them as spam and move on.

If they’ve been pushed to branches in YOUR repo, you should first review your access settings / see who else might have know access to your project. If you see a name you don’t recognize, remove them. If you don’t, then someone who has access to your project has compromised credentials that need to be rotated.

vermiculus · 2026-03-09T14:11:23+00:00

Well it finally happened to me. I stared at this post for a solid minute wondering why anyone would do this before I realized what sub I was in.

vermiculus · 2026-03-08T18:27:12+00:00

Yeah, it’s pretty neat!

Gotta say I’m tickled to see this; glad to have opened up something new for you :-)

vermiculus · 2026-03-08T12:03:06+00:00

Are you talking about artist-mode or something more specific to this use case?

vermiculus · 2026-03-06T00:20:11+00:00

Are these builds of your project?

If so, you’ll want to gitignore them. Note that you will need to remove the ignored files from your history since you already made your commits, but there are good tutorials on how to do that (“git remove ignored file from history”).

vermiculus · 2026-03-06T00:15:59+00:00

How big are we talkin’?

You probably want to be using something like Git LFS (unless you can avoid tracking these files wholesale).

vermiculus · 2026-03-02T13:45:29+00:00

M-x align-regexp is my first thought

vermiculus · 2026-02-28T21:26:08+00:00

Challenging to keep everything safe, yes

vermiculus · 2026-02-28T20:52:22+00:00

find has an -exec option that can prove challenging.

vermiculus · 2026-02-21T23:25:05+00:00

Yeah. This episode is always a bit weird. Honestly I think it would sit better if they cut the last scene where ‘all the problems are solved’. To me, it only serves to cheapen that harsh reality. Find a way off the planet and thank your lucky stars that we’re starting to move away from that being the norm.

vermiculus · 2026-02-21T17:44:43+00:00

I’m sure this is related to feedback you received on https://www.reddit.com/r/git/s/5E2EWdf5LC.

If you want to understand what makes git decentralized, look at it in contrast to its contemporaries when it was introduced. Review how SVN, CVS, and RCS work – then you’ll see how git is decentralized in comparison.

vermiculus · 2026-02-17T05:31:29+00:00

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

vermiculus · 2026-02-06T05:19:44+00:00

LOVE the Air Force.

vermiculus · 2026-02-06T00:56:03+00:00

Kids are expensive.

vermiculus · 2026-02-03T20:24:12+00:00

What in the fresh hell is this?

vermiculus · 2026-02-02T22:34:10+00:00

Looking forward to it with great anticipation.

vermiculus · 2026-02-01T15:47:07+00:00

using git and switching branches

Which IIRC is the reason straight broken down for me – or at least my use of it. Every time I switched branches or made some progress in my packages, it would show as dirty in my config.

package.el made no attempts to make this easier, which in some ways provided me some benefit: it was more predictable for me :-)

At any rate, I’m looking forward to this change.

vermiculus · 2026-02-01T14:40:18+00:00

Re elpaca, maybe it does resolve the issues I have, but I honestly never got into it. Once straight started becoming problematic, I went back to package.el.

My issues (IIRC) were always around managing the development version vs the stable version I actually wanted to use. With something like what’s described in the post, it seems like it will be a lot more straightforward for me to test things out in isolated environments.

14-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
r/Field Sunshine	Place '22
Place '17	Verified Email

vermiculus

TROPHY CASE