On Sun, 1 Feb 2026 at 07:46, Jason Moore <[email protected]> wrote: > > GSoC has played a very significant role in the history of SymPy. I don't > think that can be understated. We have always gotten lots of poor quality > contributions and interactions during the annual application phase. AI slop > causes a rise in this. > > We should have some careful deliberation before deciding to not participate > in GSoC in the future. My opinion is that GSoC results reflect proportionally > the time/quality of mentorship in most cases.
I agree but I think that reviewing all these PRs right now is not possible. I have now decided to change my own approach to doing this in such a way that almost all of the PRs opened by new contributors hoping to do GSOC will be ignored by me. The new basic rule is that if the PR is not perfect or requires any effort to review then I will ignore it and I will not leave any feedback about what is wrong with the PR. I don't think that we can reasonably select from GSOC candidates without these PRs but I also don't think it is manageable to actually review these PRs in a way that is supportive of novices. There are just too many people who would require too much coaching. I think it would be better if sympy gave up on GSOC and focussed on recruiting higher quality contributors rather than training an army of novices almost all of whom will leave as soon as the GSOC selections are announced. Even those who do GSOC rarely contribute again in future. I know that GSOC has been different in the past but I think that things have changed and it isn't worth it any more. The time spent with all these PRs would be better spent just doing what the GSOC project was suggested to do. New contributors would still come but they would be people with a broader range of experience. They would be more likely to hang around long term making it more worthwhile to coach them and their good PRs would not be ignored because of being buried in a sea of bad PRs. -- Oscar -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sympy/CAHVvXxSoBT4%3DKS3AuGMpcx%2BLtVBMNTGZqR8%2BLvJDAYaNNJ85QQ%40mail.gmail.com.
