> If my boss forces me to review it, then I do so and start quietly applying for new jobs where my job isn't to spend 10x (or 100x) more time reviewing code than my coworkers did "writing" it.
Another equally correct approach (given the circumstances of the organisation) is to get a different AISlopBot to do the review for you, so that you spend as much time reviewing as the person who submitted the PR did coding.
If they're okay with vibe-coded code, they should be fine with vibe-coded reviews too. You really only should be in a situation where you have more responsibility over your reviews than other people have for their code if you're in charge, and if you're in charge, just ban the practice.
The problem is other people/teams making PRs to your code that you then have to maintain or fix later. It’s in your interest not to half-ass the review, creating an asymmetric amount of work for you vs them.
You don't approve it. You just slowly grind the submitter down with minor feedback. At some point they lose interest and after a year you can close the PR, or ask the submitter to open a new PR.
It works best if you don't reply immediately. I recommend successively increasing the response delay. Keep it short enough to make sure that they don't start bugging you on other channels, but long enough to make sure they have time to cool down and question if the continued effort is really worth it.
As long as the response delay increases at least geometrically, there is a finite bound to the amount of work required to deal with a pull request that you will never merge.
Tragically, when you are organisationally impaired from saying 'no', this is the only way (besides, you know, quitting and getting a new job).
It's absolutely soul crushing when you're motivated to do a good job, but have a few colleagues around you that have differing priorities, and aren't empowered to do the right thing, even when management agrees with you.
I am both an open source maintainer and contributor. This is absolutely despicable behavior. You are purposefully wasting the time of a contributor for no other reason than your own fear of saying “no.”
If you’re not going to merge something, just ficking say so.
If you've read the thread, the strategy you're replying to is about a workplace scenario where outright rejection is, for whatever reason, forbidden; not an open source situation where "no" is readily available.
It makes even less sense in a work context either. This behavior will permanently alienate this user & potential customer. I’ve seen this exact scenario play out many times before.
Why would it be acceptable for the sumbitter to behave this way and not the reviewer? We do have AI "assisted" submitters behaving exactly like this and acting irate when forced to actually reflect on the turd they're trying to shove into my inbox
Why waste anyone’s bandwidth on this? As maintainer of some open source projects, there are no circumstances in which I would accept a 9kLOC drive by contribution like this. State so and close it.
The conditional was: If my boss forces me to review it
> As maintainer of some open source projects, there are no circumstances in which...
...you would force yourself to do anything that you don't want to do. Your approach is absolutely correct for the organisational circumstances in which this might happen to you.
There are other organisational circumstances where being the squeaky wheel, even when it's the right thing to do for the business, will be the wrong thing for you personally. It's valuable to identify when you're standing in front of a steamroller, and get out of the way.
Boss forced me? Good. I’ll take a look at the first 100-200 lines, find 3-5 critical or deadly errors, document it clearly and write to the boss how this vibe coding shit is wasting so much of my time
Have a backbone. I would seriously quit on the spot if requested to break my professional integrity with respect to open source development. I have been in this situation before too, so I’m not just saying it.
Another equally correct approach (given the circumstances of the organisation) is to get a different AISlopBot to do the review for you, so that you spend as much time reviewing as the person who submitted the PR did coding.