AI for actual prose writing, no question. Don't let a single word an LLM generates land in your document; even if you like it, kill it.
AI for actual prose writing, no question. Don't let a single word an LLM generates land in your document; even if you like it, kill it.
"Gatekeeping" became a trendy term for a while, but in the post-LLM world people are recognizing that "gatekeeping" is not the same as "having a set of standards or rules by which a community abides".
If you have a nice community where anyone can come in and do whatever they want, you no longer have a community, you have a garbage dump. A gate to keep out the people who arrive with bags of garbage is not a bad thing.
"Gatekeeping" is NOT when you require someone to be willing learn a skill in order to join a community of people with that skill.
And in fact, saying "you are too stupid to learn that on your own, use an AI instead" is kind of gatekeeping on its own, because it implicitly creates a shrinking elite who actually have the knowledge (that is fed to the AI so it can be regurgitated for everyone else), shutting out the majority who are stuck in the "LLM slum".
We have always relied on superficial cues to tell us about some deeper quality (good faith, willingness to comply with code of conduct, and so on). This is useful and is a necessary shortcut, as if we had to assess everyone and everything from first principles every time things would grind to a halt. Once a cue becomes unviable, the “gate” is not eliminated (except if briefly); the cue is just replaced with something else that is more difficult to circumvent.
I think that brief time after Internet enabled global communication and before LLMs devalued communication signals was pretty cool; now it seems like there’s more and more closed, private or paid communities.
"the author (pilot?) hasn't generally thought too much about the problem space, and so there isn't really much of a discussion to be had. The cool part about pre-AI show HN is you got to talk to someone who had thought about a problem for way longer than you had. It was a real opportunity to learn something new, to get an entirely different perspective."
I feel like I've been around these parts for a while, and that is not my experience of what Show HN was originally about, though I'm sure there was always an undercurrent of status hierarchy and approval-seeking, like you suggest.
What is your hoped for outcome here man? To come off like enough of a jerk or obtuse enough that people just abandon the thread and you can declare victory?
I don't dispute the quality decline on Show HN or the need for some kind of intervention, but this particular argument about how AI interacts with "Show HN" is in fact introducing a new and significant element of gatekeeping to it.
Show HN is not in fact a craftspersons forum! Craft can be one of the things it's about, but it's not the only thing.
And we are going to need more curration so goddamned badly....
For what it's worth, the unifying idea behind both is basically a "hazing ritual", or more neutrally phrased, skin in the game. It takes time and energy to look at things people produce. You should spend time and energy making sure I'm not looking at a pile of shit. Doesn't matter if it's a website or prose.
Obviously some people don't. And that's why the signal to noise ratio is becoming shit very quickly.
Wouldn't the masses of Show HN posts that have gotten no interest pre-AI refute that?
The single one I can think of is someone who (I quote) "accidentally created the fastest CSV parser ever using SIMD". This person had no interest in researching prior art themselves, and thus incorrectly claimed credit for "coming up" with this approach - and they didn't even do that.
It's not only the prose that's the problem if submitters are determined not to think.
> AI for actual prose writing, no question. Don't let a single word an LLM generates land in your document; even if you like it, kill it.
Why? What's the difference? I'm genuinely curious about your perspective on this. Lots of people can't articulate themselves well, especially if they don't natively speak the language they're writing in. I have my problems with LLM generated text, but you seem to be taking an extreme approach here.