Re: [PATCH] Documentation: remove the requirement for LLM attribution

[Lorenzo Stoakes <ljs@kernel.org>]

On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 12:11:20PM -0400, Chuck Lever wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2026, at 10:32 AM, Jeff Layton wrote:
> > We've had this requirement in place in the Documentation for several
> > months, but it's becoming clear that the signal to noise ratio from this
> > is quite low.
> >
> > 1/ It's not universally followed. While many people do try to attribute
> > the LLMs in good faith, not everyone does for various reasons.
> >
> > 2/ It basically serves as free advertising for proprietary LLM companies.
> >
> > 3/ It's not clear why we want to collect this info in the first place.
> >
> > Given that the data this provides is flawed at best and is being
> > collected for a purpose that isn't clear, let's just kill the
> > requirement for these tags from the kernel at large.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>
> > ---
> > Christian had proposed watering down the LLM attribution, but I think
> > it's not productive to try and track this until we have a clearer sense
> > of what we want to do with this information and how to make it more
> > reliable.
>
> I agree that the current tagging system is flawed and almost useless
> for real analysis -- self-reporting and a nebulous definition of what
> "LLM was used" actually means are red flags for any data scientist.
>
> I don't have a stand on whether the tagging should be removed or fixed.
> But today I ignore it (my 2-cents US) for these reasons.

Oh no doubt they have highly dubious value as _data_.

But they are useful for practical purposes :) i.e. 'ok I can talk about the
LLM-ness here without it being quite so aggressive to do so because it's
admitted'.

And also political value in that 'here is how you are supposed to do it'
vs. <how you did it>.

I think there's definite practical human stuff that they provide sufficient for
there to be value here, and I've found that in practice also :)

(Though of course it's far far from resolving how we deal with the unattributed
stuff, which remains an ongoing issue!)

>
> --
> Chuck Lever

Cheers, Lorenzo