Post B5WZdrZNU1ouIPRivA by coderanger@cloudisland.nz
 (DIR) More posts by coderanger@cloudisland.nz
 (DIR) Post #B5WZdrZNU1ouIPRivA by coderanger@cloudisland.nz
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       I really can't overstate just how much all the social hubs for software people (of all kinds) are dying due to bots and spam. Across the board, places to learn the craft of building good software are being locked down because the tide of capital-c Content™ is unceasing. I have been a community organizer for approaching 20 years now and I have no idea what to do anymore. Weather the storm and hope the price of LLM inference soon reflects its actual costs? Ban everyone that looks suspicious? I've ranted before that manual verification isn't a useful answer and I stand by that, but public spaces have an even harder problem than projects vetting contributions. We _can't_ vet everyone posting to r/python or the kubernetes slack, it's literally impossible. The next generation isn't just being handed The Robot as an easy way to "learn" (maybe? when it's not completely wrong?), for many it's the only way left. The last teacher left standing.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5WZdrsWKr8HFmP0l6 by AlSweigart@mastodon.social
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       @coderanger Charge $10 for a lifetime not-a-bot tag on your account, and moderate for anyone being an ass. If they're going to be bots trying to blend in, they'll have to play nice at least.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5WZds5zWluLvYhlku by coderanger@cloudisland.nz
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       @AlSweigart That's the SomethingAwful approach and I think that's strong evidence it doesn't work, it's always been awash with sockpuppets and bots. Also creates massive economic power imbalance issues.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5WZdsJ6k0OqaEqFCS by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @coderanger @AlSweigart some counterpoints: 1. SomethingAwful used this to relatively good success *with lowtax in charge* for quite a while.2. nothing says it has to be a flat $10, it can be geographically price indexed3. you can have a rate-limited number of monthly free slots to go along with it, to provide an affordance for those who are really unable to e.g. access a credit cardall of this is obviously still a big operational annoyance but it might be our last hope 😞.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5WZdsZPlNRZOoTGcK by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @coderanger @AlSweigart rereading this today I realize I may not have made it totally clear that "with lowtax in charge" was specifically meant to indicate "with the worst, most unresponsive leadership possible, thus better leadership more actively managing the process could do much better"
       
 (DIR) Post #B5WZdsoeqhdYA5bRNQ by lumi@snug.moe
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       @glyph @coderanger @AlSweigart i feel web-of-trust, invite-only spaces and reputation systems might be better than requiring paymentit feels wrong to require payment to be in an online space or get a tag like this
       
 (DIR) Post #B5WaUmTT9rbfqCupjE by miss_rodent@girlcock.club
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       @lumi @glyph @coderanger @AlSweigart Agreed, but, that creates an intake problem - How does one build that reputation as an outsider, in ways that can't be abused or manipulated like, say, reddit's karma system often is. Building that reputation often still requires open or semi-open public spaces for people to establish themselves in, which suffer the same vulnerability to bot-spam, unless you commit to personally reviewing every applicant for entry (like a lot of masto servers do) >
       
 (DIR) Post #B5WaUpXpk5sdMbyrRo by miss_rodent@girlcock.club
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       @lumi @glyph @coderanger @AlSweigart < which works, but does not scale very well, especially for something with as many people trying to get in as, like, r/python (to use OP's example)
       
 (DIR) Post #B5WbLDgfE6qfIZ5m9A by miss_rodent@girlcock.club
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       @lumi @glyph @coderanger @AlSweigart Yeah, having a public-filtered division can help somewhat, but, if you're trying to do that sort of filtered approach, having a clear (social) mechanism for how to earn that first bit of reputation to get through the barriers - that isn't in some way unfairly discriminatory against the actual well-meaning humans trying to get in - is very important.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5WbLpPywa5EJpZzQ8 by miss_rodent@girlcock.club
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       @lumi @glyph @coderanger @AlSweigart If scale is not a major concern - like for a lot of masto servers, discord/matrix/etc. servrs, and so on - it's much more managable though. It's just very difficult to manage that sort of up-front filtering at the scale of  'a popular programming language/desktop enviroment/distro/whatever used by thousands of people daily'