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Comment by singiamtel | Hacker News Reader

Does this mean Copilot tab complete is banned too? What about asking an LLM for advice and then writing all the code yourself?

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The language is actually:

> Any contribution of any LLM-generated content

I read this as "LLM-generated contributions" are not welcome, not "any contribution that used LLMs in any way".

More generally, this is clearly a rule to point to in order to end discussions with low effort net-negative contributors. I doubt it's going to be a problem for actually valuable contributions.

> Does this mean Copilot tab complete is banned too? What about asking an LLM for advice and then writing all the code yourself?

You're brushing up against some of the reasons why I am pretty sure policies like this will be futile. They may not diminish in popularity but they will be largely unenforceable. They may serve as an excuse for rejecting poor quality code or code that doesn't fit the existing conventions/patterns but did maintainers need a new reason to reject those PRs?

How does one show that no assistive technologies below some threshold were used?

> How does one show that no assistive technologies below some threshold were used?

In this case, you don't:

> immediately be banned without recourse

In other words, if the maintainer(s) think it's LLM-generated, right or wrong, you're banned.

Idk why anyone would contribute to a project with an attitude like this

that's fine, they probably don't want you then

I don't want them either. I'll find someone else who likes me the way I am. Plenty of fish in the pond.

Make useful, carefully reviewed contributions and you'll be fine.

That seems unlikely. Probably, what is going to happen, is if during a code review, you can't actually explain what your code is doing or why you wrote it, then you will be banned.

I don't know much about this project, but looking at the diff with their previous policy, it's pretty clear that people were abusing it and not declaring that they use llms, and they don't actually know what they're doing

Then a friendlier and clearer wording for the policy would work better. The current one says you will be "immediately" banned "without recourse" which implies that nothing like you are describing will happen.

Or arguably that's the point. If you Copilot generate a few lines of code or use it for inspiration you're still paying attention to it and are aware of what it's doing. The actual outcome will be indistinguishable from the code you hand wrote so it's fine. What policies like this do is stop someone generating whole pages at once, run it with minimal testing then chuck it into the code base forever.

I'm pretty sure the point is that anything clearly generated will result in an instant ban. That seems rather fair, you want contributors who only submit code they can fully understand and reason about.

The language clearly says "If you use an LLM [...] to make any kind of contribution".

[I was wrong and posted a link to an earlier policy/discussion overridden by the OP]

you seem to be reading that backwards, that's the content that was removed. it now just says "if LLM, banned": https://github.com/twpayne/chezmoi/blob/master/.github/CODE_...

The part you are quoting is being removed. The policy used to state "If you contribute un-reviewed LLM generated...", now simply states "If you use an LLM to make any kind of contribution then you will immediately be banned without recourse."

[I was wrong and posted a link to an earlier policy/discussion overridden by the OP]

Did you read the policy? "If you use an LLM to make any kind of contribution..."

It's you who isn't reading the policy. What you are reading instead is deleted sections in a Git commit which are not part of the policy.

Said policy:

    * Any contribution of any LLM-generated content will be rejected and result in
      an immediate ban for the contributor, without recourse.

That’s not what it says. It’s pretty clear…

> Any contribution of any LLM-generated content will be rejected and result in an immediate ban for the contributor, without recourse.

You can argue it’s unenforceable, unproductive, or a bad idea. But it says nothing about unreviewed code. Any LLM generated code.

I’m not sure how great of an idea it is, but then again, it’s not my project.

Personally, I’d rather read a story about how this came to be. Either the owner of the project really hates LLMs or someone submitted something stupid. Either would be a good read.

The linked thread includes the story

Tab completions by LLM are code generated by an LLM.

Not sure about this project in particular, but many more popular projects (curl comes to mind) have adopted similar policies not out of spite but because they'd get submerged by slop.

Sure, a smart guy with a tool can do so much more, but an idiot with a tool can ruin it for everyone.

Isn't it then more reasonable to have a policy that "people who submit low quality PRs will be banned"? Target the actual problem rather than an unreliable proxy of the problem.

LLM-generated code can be high quality just as human-generated code can be low quality.

Also, having a "no recourse" policy is a bit hostile to your community. There will no doubt be people who get flagged as using LLMs when they didn't and denying them even a chance to defend themselves is harsh.

Banning LLMs can result in shorter arguments. "Low quality" is overly subjective and will probably take a lot of time to argue about. And then the possible outrage if it is taken to social media.

> Banning LLMs can result in shorter argument

Can it really? "You submitted LLM-generated contributions" is also highly subjective. Arguably more so since you can't ever really be sure if somethingi s AI generated while with quality issues there are concrete things you can point to (e.g. it the code simply doesn't work, doesn't meet the contributor guidelines, uses obvious anti-patterns etc.).

If you rtfa, you will find it's actually the other way around. The linked PR from the AI has "concrete things you can point to" like "the code simply doesn't work".

Here's a post from Daniel Stenberg (curl maintainer) announcing that he just landed 22 LLM-generated commits.

https://mastodon.social/@bagder/115241241075258997

So obviously curl doesn't have a blanket ban.

I am wondering why you are posting this link, then asking this question to the HN community, instead of asking the project directly for more details. I does look like your intent is to stir some turmoil over the project position, and not to contribute constructively to the project.

That kind of point could be made for a large fraction of HN comments, but that aside: if a project’s policy is to ban for any LLM usage, without recourse, just asking a question about it could put you on a list of future suspects…

Good point, I'll include my question on the original discussion

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