The main thing that changed for worse recently though, with the rise of AI, is that it became very easy to create open-source contributions that look good at first, but there is no real substance or quality behind them.
Before, one could quickly assess the PR for quality: if it looked complex and good, the person behind it for sure had to put the effort and obtain a certain level of understanding of the codebase and the subject matter.
Effort was put in, so you didn't feel bad putting effort from your side also, while reviewing it.
Now, you often just can't know till you dive in deeper.
Good example is Craig's contribution of a Latex document with the new formal grammar for Wasp that I mentioned above.
When Craig submitted that in 2021, I didn't think twice about investing a whole week of my own time to be able to review that PR properly. I was brimming with excitement. Even though I knew nothing about Craig.
Today, if I received such a contribution, my first assumption would be that it was AI generated, with no deep understanding of the matter by the author. And I wouldn't dare invest a week, or even a day of my own time, to evaluate it. And to be clear, it's not even about purely evaluating the correctness of the submitted work: maybe it is correct, maybe it works well, maybe it is even well designed. The problem is, I can't rely on the person behind it. I can't hope that there will be a rich, fulfilling cooperation coming out of this, resulting in new ideas, in growing together, creating something together. And if not, if the whole contribution is primarily AI driven, then what is the point? I can do it myself when I decide I want to tackle it without understanding, prompt my own AI, likely with a better prompt and better context.
This sucks. It sucks that my first assumption on seeing a contribution is that it is AI generated, and I wish it wasn't so, but that is how it is at the moment. It sucks for the maintainers, and it also sucks for the honest contributors that are putting in the real work.
What can one do then, as a new contributor to an open-source project, to surpass this?
It comes down to a single thing, which is building trust.