Re:GitHub Says ‘No Thanks’ to Bots — Even if They’re Nice
by hackinthebochs on Saturday December 29, 2012 @01:18PM
(#4982863)
>A PR from a bot is the same as a PR from anyone else, it's either helpful or not helpful.
You're missing a key point here. The difference between PRs from bots and people is that there is a balance of effort on the part of the person giving the PR that bots do not have. PRs take time and effort to evaluate on the part of the repo owner. A PR from a person has a higher chance of being a meaningful change as the person had to spend their own time and effort to offer it. There is also a consideration of the nature of PRs from bots. They will necessarily be of a certain class of actions and in the vast majority of cases be low effort, low impact changes. Having these compete with PRs from actual people is not a good direction for github.
Also, the slippery slope retort is getting tired. We can and should use our reasoning skills and historical precedence to evaluate likely usages of new rules (you'd be negligent if you didn't). In the case of bots, the possibility of having repo owners spammed with low value changes is enough to disallow it.
You're missing a key point here. The difference between PRs from bots and people is that there is a balance of effort on the part of the person giving the PR that bots do not have. PRs take time and effort to evaluate on the part of the repo owner. A PR from a person has a higher chance of being a meaningful change as the person had to spend their own time and effort to offer it. There is also a consideration of the nature of PRs from bots. They will necessarily be of a certain class of actions and in the vast majority of cases be low effort, low impact changes. Having these compete with PRs from actual people is not a good direction for github.
Also, the slippery slope retort is getting tired. We can and should use our reasoning skills and historical precedence to evaluate likely usages of new rules (you'd be negligent if you didn't). In the case of bots, the possibility of having repo owners spammed with low value changes is enough to disallow it.