Edit 3 - further refining.
There are some rather… unique interpretations of what a promo post is, along with an important note that some people lurk. Its important though that they participate somewhere to make sure its not a drive-by ad, but its fair to say that there are users in programming, linux, and other communities whose posts would be welcomed by users here.
Its also important to users here that its not just post and disappear.
So I’m adjusting to:
Promotion posts require your active participation in selfhosting or related communities, or the post will be removed. No more than 10% of your posts or comments may be self-promotional, or your post will be removed. F/LOSS Exception: If your post is about a project that is completely open source & can be self-hosted in full without payment, your post is exempt from this rule as long as you continue to engage in comments.
EDIT 2 AT THE TOP AGAIN:
It seems there is some confusion around the term “promo posts”, so I’m making another adjustment for clarity. If this is muddying the waters instead, please point that out!
Self-promotion posts advertising their product requires community participation, or they will be removed. No more than 10% of your posts or comments may be self-promotional, or your post will be removed. F/LOSS Exception: If your post is about a project that is completely open source & can be self-hosted in full without payment, your post is exempt from this rule.
I worry a bit that its getting unwieldy, so feel free to suggest options to clean up the language a bit.
EDIT AT THE TOP:
Promotional posts require community participation or they will be removed. No more than 10% of your posts or comments may be self-promotional, or your post will be removed. F/LOSS Exception: If your post is about a project that is completely open source & can be used in full without payment, it will be exempt from this rule.
Intended to clarify on “paywall” - it has to be open source and run in full locally, no one-time or subscription-locked payment for features, to qualify. Donations don’t count as that doesn’t limit use, while something like Kavita (which has non-free features behind a subscription, despite the base being open source) would not have the benefit of exemption. The rule intent hasn’t changed here, just the wording on the exemption limitations.
I’ve gotten through (I believe) all the comments in the meta thread. So I want to establish a few things, first being a better definition on spam.
Spam is not “I don’t like this and its a paid product” or “I don’t like this and they used AI/LLMs”.
Spam would generally be considered:
- Mass-posting - Posting the exact same post across a bunch of of different communities, rapidly.
- Repetitive Content (aka karma farming) - repeatedly submitting old popular content. I’ll note that this is completely irrelevant on lemmy, this was more of a reddit issue due to karma.
- Bot Activity / AI Abuse - Using scripts/bots/gen AI to automate posts and comments.
- Unsolicited DMs - Mass private messages or chats to users, completely unsolicited
I’d say anything other than that deserves a followup rule, and this definition should go in the sidebar.
Regarding the promotional posts themselves, I think something like the 10% rule makes sense - no more than 10% of the account should be self-promotional material or comments within the community.
I do think it makes sense to include an exception for 100% free/libre open source projects. Partially open projects with a closed (paid) component should be subject to the 10% rule. So what I propose as the rule would be:
Promotional posts require community participation or they will be removed. No more than 10% of your posts or comments may be self-promotional, or your post will be removed. F/LOSS Exception: If your post is about a project that is completely open source & without any paywalls, it will be exempt from this rule.
Questions, comments, clarifications, and harsh criticisms are welcomed in the comments. As a reminder from my intro post, and because of some comments in the other thread, I will mention:
There are people on both sides of the keyboards, so please be respectful of others.
I think you’re missing the part where this happens now.
Having an AI tag also means that posting comments to complain about using AI is off-topic and would be removed.
Maybe. So let me steelman what I think you’re saying.
It seems like you’re making a case for some kind of loop - AI tag means you can’t complain about AI tagged posts, and if you do, your post gets removed.
Have I represented your position fairly?
My counter point is - if the hostility already exists without a tag, that confirms the tag isn’t a cultural fix.
If complaints about AI use become off-topic and get removed, you haven’t improved the community’s relationship with AI content, you’ve just suppressed the feedback loop.
Is that really the right direction, given the reality of AI assistance in coding?
The hostility doesn’t go away. It goes underground, or people leave anyway.
Moderating away dissent isn’t community health, it’s just quieter dissent.
The community reacting negatively to AI content is the signal. A tag that makes that signal removable isn’t a solution, it’s a lid on a pot.
I’m not calling for some grand destigmatization of slop, I’m calling for nuance and education.
Which ultimately is beyond the scope of a mod…but you’re the one wearing the cape. What sort of house do you want to run?
Let’s at least not do something that propagates the knee jerk “fuckAI and fuck you” Lemmy is famous for.
It’s a hard problem, to be sure. Maybe your AI tag is a fair enough step for now.
Comment, but yes.
Not my job or in my control to change the culture, only to keep it on topic and appropriate commentary.
I can’t force people to recognize a tool as a tool, and I’m not trying to.
And doesn’t detract from the posts with people who do understand the different ways to leverage an llm, and wish to interact with that content.
Which is what is happening now. So it can either be that, or something else. If you have a better idea, absolutely post about it as I said. Doing nothing, however, does nothing and continues exactly what you’re concerned about.
OK, so you’re not claiming to fix culture, just to give constructive engagement a cleaner lane. I can respect that.
Thing is, how are you going to verify [NOT AI] tagged posts? Because if it’s the porn argument (I know it when I see it), then you’re indirectly arguing for the same thing I am, with extra work for you.
Hell, if [NOT AI] can’t be reliably verified, your two-class system collapses to one class: the labeled ones. At that point it’s not an information system, it’s a stigma mechanism.
More so, disclosure tags don’t tell the reader whether the code is accurate, safe or good - shitty work is shitty either way. If they can tell it’s slop, you don’t need the tag. If you can’t, the tag isn’t helping.
I assume all software in 2026 has had AI assistance and evaluate it on its merits irrespective.
I’m not sure a scarlet letter does as much work as you’re hoping for.
Sorry, no answers, just thinking out loud with you.
I’m willing to try it as a system, so long as it doesn’t get fossilised.
Pretty much.
No different than what I check for now - associated .md’s/.cursorrules, git commit behavior, code comments, and desktop code detection tools.
I can also guarantee that users check these very same things and then comment or report, and will be way more likely to do so if someone is saying it isn’t AI and its obvious there is.
Where those who tag appropriately are also protected from non-comments of “slop”, which is the only difference between current and the potential tag.
Which you can’t tell based on AI anyway, and not what I’m responsible for as the community janitor.
But your verification method is reading the code, checking git history, evaluating the work. That’s exactly the merit-based review I’m arguing for. You’ve just added a tag on top of it.
Are you of the belief that [AI] tag does good? I’m not seeing it but I remain open. Is it to make reporting easier? Is it implicit crowd control? I don’t get the utility.
To make clear - I don’t mind disclosure. In fact, I might even be for it. At the same time, GitHub’s own surveys show the majority of developers now use AI coding assistance regularly.
Which means the reasonable assumption for any actively maintained project in 2026 is “probably had significant AI help” - and that includes FOSS self hosted darlings.
Sits weird, but if were following the letter of the law, that’s where we might land.
Comment management.
Its one of the first comments or questions in every post - so its important to the users of the community.
And people recognizing that it was part of the tooling in some way?
Whats the downside?
That said, I’m going to pause on this discussion, its OT for the thread, this really needs to be a separate discussion.
On it.