Re: [sympy] Introduction:Learning, Contributing, and Growing with SymPy.

[Oldřich Klimánek]

I am sorry but such emails pop out every day and have the same structure. Is it only me or do others also think these are bot generated? To all who wanna contribute: find a bug you feel comfortable to fix and fix it. No other guideline. 

Cheers,

O.K.

14. 1. 2026 v 0:28, 'Shourya' via sympy <sy...@googlegroups.com>:

Hi everyone! 
I’m Shourya, an undergraduate computer science student, and I’ve recently started contributing to SymPy. I’m actively preparing and aiming for GSoC 2026, and I’m really excited to learn, collaborate, and grow through open-source contributions.

I’m proficient in Python and comfortable working with NumPy and Jupyter notebooks. My academic interests strongly align with mathematics, physics, and symbolic mathematics, which is what drew me to SymPy in the first place. I enjoy understanding problems deeply, working through edge cases, and improving both correctness and clarity in code.

I’m looking forward to contributing consistently, learning from the community, and making meaningful improvements to the project. Excited to be here and collaborate with you all!

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[Oscar Benjamin]

On Tue, 13 Jan 2026 at 23:53, Oldřich Klimánek
<oldrich....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I am sorry but such emails pop out every day and have the same structure. Is it only me or do others also think these are bot generated?

I think it is important to distinguish between actual AI bots and
actual humans who are using AI (to write comments, emails, code, ...).
It seems clear now that all new sympy contributors are using AI but
that does not mean that they are bots. There are actual bots on GitHub
though and that is something very different and deeply troubling.

Actual humans using AI don't seem to realise how problematic it is to
make themselves look like an AI by parroting them.

--
Oscar

[Oldřich Klimánek]

But, Oscar, these emails pop out here every day, sometime several times a day: all from India or Bangladesh (I doubt that guys from India need AI to translate for them). Were they from Netherlands, South Africa and then Saudi Arabia, to say, I would not say a word. But these msg are the same every day, apparently from the sam source. It is kinda tiring to read these.

I have nothing against AI helping folks with PRs. But… all days I do I keep deleting email notifications. Sad. This place should be for discussions on important topics regarding Sympy.

Cheers,
O.K.

> 14. 1. 2026 v 1:12, Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j....@gmail.com>:

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[Oscar Benjamin]

On Wed, 14 Jan 2026 at 00:19, Oldřich Klimánek
<oldrich....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> But, Oscar, these emails pop out here every day, sometime several times a day: all from India or Bangladesh (I doubt that guys from India need AI to translate for them). Were they from Netherlands, South Africa and then Saudi Arabia, to say, I would not say a word. But these msg are the same every day, apparently from the sam source. It is kinda tiring to read these.

I agree. I think the problem is that there is something somewhere that
tells people to do this e.g.:
https://docs.sympy.org/latest/contributing/introduction-to-contributing.html#join-our-mailing-list

I think there might be something more explicit somewhere else (in the
GSOC instructions?). There are too many people who are interested in
contributing to SymPy for GSOC for it to be reasonable that they all
send an email to the mailing list though because it makes the mailing
list a waste of time for anything else.

--
Oscar

[Jason Moore]

We also have these specific GSoC instructions: https://github.com/sympy/sympy/wiki/GSoC-Student-Instructions That has some specific instructions on a first email. I suspect that GSoC probably tells students to do this somewhere too.

In general, I think we do want to encourage any new contributor to introduce themselves and explain what they want to work on, etc. But the nature of GSoC creates a flood of "new contributors" that do not actually end up contributing or only contribute during the application period.

Of course, any new contributor may not understand they are emailing hundred (or maybe a thousand) people in this forum.

Jason

moorepants.info
+01 530-601-9791

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[Aaron Meurer]

We could remove these instructions. The mailing list introductions
made sense 15 years ago when there weren't very many people doing GSoC
and most people who introduced themselves went on to actually
contribute and apply. Nowadays the list is kind of just spammed with
them and it doesn't add any value. But it's also been this way for a
good while.

Aaron Meurer

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[Oscar Benjamin]

The instructions don't say to post to the mailing list but they do say
"""
If posting for the first time to the mailing list please use an
informative first email so that we can get to know you.
"""
I guess that gives the impression that you should send an email to the
mailing list. The problem though is that these emails don't really
serve that purpose i.e. no one is getting to know anyone. There are
too many introduction emails to follow and no one replies to them.

What would be better would be something like "join the mailing list so
that you can see discussions there" and "if you have a question about
contributing then you might want to use the mailing list but first see
the FAQ/guidelines".

A lot of questions are along the lines of "what is a good way to get
started contributing" but it isn't really possible to give that
anything more than a generic answer that could in a FAQ. If there is a
*specific* question then it would be useful to use the mailing list
and actually discuss it.

--
Oscar

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