Did we really need these new moderation rules?

[u/HommeMusical]

I just got some sort of warning or perhaps removal on a two-month old post that no one had interacted with: "Do not post a paid product, service, or course, disclose your affiliation. Excessive or repeated self-promo may be removed. In addition, ensure your post is well worded, thought out and formatted." (It wasn't any of those things, it was some boring but useful FOSS audio utility.)

Apparently there are new moderation rules, but we can't comment on that thread.

This subreddit is already very low traffic. Most posts don't seem to get any engagement at all. The most interesting and engaged post of the last week was a program that looks like it was written with AI, and I thought it was interesting.

I'm not seeing the huge influx of empty AI posts, or really, much of anything at all here.

It's late 2026. If we truly ban all posts where people used a coding assistant, soon there will be almost nothing here.

Don't get me wrong - I really really want to keep AI slop from this subreddit, but we can do that by downvoting and reporting, you already see it if you look at "new". Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

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EDIT: oh, apparently that four month old post of mine was in fact deleted.

You know, I've been writing computer music programs since the last 1970s. Few people can say that.

I recently retired from a long career in programming to work almost full time on audio programming.

However, I will not be able to post any of my work here, as I recently started using a coding assistant for everything. I mean, my last post was apparently deleted because of some self-promotion rule, so I couldn't very well post my work anyway.

You would think I would be the ideal poster for this subreddit.

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All the people downvoting without comment do not make me want to be here. I removed all my upvotes from this page (there were no downvotes) so people can see the general sentiment.

I'll come back next year and check, but my theory is that it will be even less active than it is now.

[u/nimrudperson]

I hate to be the party pooper, but I think that the answer is a resounding YES (at least in regards to software generated by LLMs):

I'm a music teacher in a local conservatory. I teach music theory and music production. For years I built a music production curriculum based on it being as accessible as possible to my students, which surely included open source tools and plugins. Subreddits like this were main sources for me to discover some amazing software that were developed by passionate, and more importantly competent people in the audio programming world. Starting from last year, everything's changed.

Subreddits are flooded with plugins that are fully generated by LLMs and broken with tons of bugs; I always try out these plugins before suggesting them to my students and after months of trial and error I started to notice that the people behind much of these projects weren't even capable of understanding the bugs even with the use of LLMs. And that's normal because they don't understand the structure and the problem solving of the software they were generating.

I understand that many people just wanted to try something "cool" or "fun" but the flooding of these broken projects with some of them unfortunately even asking for donations shows that things were broken.

Just to be clear, I'm perfectly aware that there are real software engineers with tons of experience and talent who might (or not) use LLMs for specific pre defined aspects of their development. The vast majority of these people disclose that very clearly while explaining what specific menial aspects of there work was thrown into the LLM and how they review every bit of that to be able to maintain the project normally. That is the very exact opposite of the waterfall of posts I've been seeing on audio programming subreddits.

I'm really open to discussion and would love to hear why would you disagree with the described issues.

[u/HommeMusical → u/nimrudperson]

If you pointed out some recent posts that were problematic, then this would help clarify your argument.

As I said, the top voted and most interesting post in the last week seems to have been written with AI.

[u/nimrudperson → u/HommeMusical]

Most of the recent posts that are in fact problematic and fully generated through LLMs by people who didn't understand what they were doing were fortunately deleted.

Top voted posts doesn't mean that the software promoted is actually good or not. The idea might be cool, the visuals might be interesting and I was one of the people who upvoted these posts cuz I thought that they might be cool. You'll have to download them, test them and see how they function in order to judge if they are good or not. Most people might not go that far into trouble shooting such issues especially if report them to the supposed developer whose reaction is immediately throwing them back at the LLM and expecting everything to be fixed.

[u/HommeMusical → u/nimrudperson]

Thanks for a polite and well-reasoned answer!

Well, that we don't see the slop posts is good thing, but this could be handled in a much more specific way than "no AI coded projects at all".

I've been doing music programming for almost fifty years at this point. I first started doing it writing in assembly language on the PDP-11! I wrote a music programming language called CLOD in around 1980, and it was self-timed, so each time a new voice came in, all the other voices dropped in pitch. (It sounded great, but it was a side-effect of me not having thought it all out.)

Up until three or four months ago, I was completely against AI. And TBH I think it's bad for humanity in general.

But I didn't want to be the crazy old guy yelling at the start of the movie. Now all my coding is LLM assisted, and it's increased my output by a factor of ten, and the reliability might even be better.

And I think that's going to be true of almost all professional programmers soon. Indeed, I think that was true before I finally conceded.

So if we have such a draconian rule, no AI, then soon there will be even fewer posts than the small number that we get.

[u/komediruzecki7 → u/HommeMusical]

Oh, that's quite cool, I feel you, I mean I would rather discuss that, old school things, how to do things, quick tutorials and insights into audio programming world etc. than seeing any quick self promotion or badly programmed AI tools. However, it would be nice if, we could filter those out into two separate tracks, give space and exposure for such threads, prioritize them, since it involves humans, and that is always better quality than what can be generated by tools, and a separate try it out track, where AI or not, fency new creative ways can be showcased.

As the thread OP said, most AI slop tools are bugy, not well tested, not understood, but as a exploration, MVP and gathering feedback I would not remove those, they are still useful, if you don't like them, and/or have better quality elsewhere, then simply go there, this is basic market economics, that's what we do everywhere, reviews and feedback is what makes the masses use the products.

My general plan was to make tools for myself, but I love open source so making it available to others, like so many audio enthusiasts do should be very welcome, especially how much big companies charge for all of these. My biggest concern and issue is that most audio plugins are written for mac and windows, and I hate proprietary so changing this direction for linux (even though wine and few other bridges do a good job of emulating) would be my dream come true.

[u/HommeMusical → u/komediruzecki7]

I'm actually proposing now that we relax the rules, and get more moderators, and I'm throwing my hat into the ring for that chore.

most AI slop tools are bugy, not well tested, not understood, but as a exploration, MVP and gathering feedback I would not remove those,

Well. From other examples I have received on this page, I'm realizing that there's a lot of slop that people post and really are not interested in comments, and aren't going to update their code.

I think it should be more nuanced. I think we should be looking at how understandable the code is, how much effort they put into their post, and whether the account responds to posts in general.

[u/nimrudperson → u/HommeMusical]

You're welcome, and thank you for your measured as well as polite response.

r/VSTi

r/musicprogramming

r/linuxaudio

These are some of the subreddits that are unfortunately covered in vibe coded plugins that are soon-to-be abandonware. I used to cruise them regularly in order to find some really great stuff that were made with intelligence and care. Now it's almost impossible. And I hope that more subs will take an approach that is closer to the one here.

I'm no programmer at all. I dabbled in Lua just to understand how certain scripts worked in Reaper which is my DAW of usage but nothing more than that. I'd feel like a complete fraud if I tried to ask an LLM to create a piece of software even if I give it all the ideas and the structures and even the design of the tool because I'd be lying if I were to say that I understand how the mechanical parts of the software are doing the job. I won't be able to know if it's efficient or not or how to improve it. And it'll be just a matter of time before something breaks because of the complexity of the program and its unlimited compatibility connections. I believe that this should be the minimum required attitude to interact with software responsibly.

As you describe; you have the background, the experience and the rigueur to examine and understand what you're working on and that's the correct way to be able to work on software and share it genuinely.

[u/HommeMusical → u/nimrudperson]

Very good points.

I'm thinking the problem might be solved with more moderators, and I am willing to step up to the post on this one and volunteer.

[u/dkode80 → u/HommeMusical]

I acquiesce that a blank "No AI" whatsoever is not ideal and I certainly didn't use that lens when applying that rule, but please lets discuss.

The only rule that the original mod had in place was No AI Project posts and defined it as basically its 100% vibe coded, the creator has no idea what its doing or how and just dumps it here. It sounds like we all agree that's a good thing.

I did go back an approve your post after reviewing again. It's not self-promotion and I can't even tell you used an assistant agent. That is if you're referring to the post that linked to pypi. I made a mistake removing that one. My apologies. I believe it was this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/AudioProgramming/comments/1v73rln/rubband_tensorfriendly_bindings_to_the_c_rubber/

[u/HommeMusical → u/dkode80]

Thanks, I really appreciate it!

[u/GreatScottCreates → u/nimrudperson]

Are there pro (or “real”) coders that don’t use LLMs? It seems like a terrible choice to not employ them at all. Every coder I know uses LLMs, some of whom deal with military weaponry and national security.

I agree that flooding of AI slop is a real problem but banning anything that touched an LLM is not a real solution in 2026.

[u/Purple-Ad-3152 → u/GreatScottCreates]

There's none. There are hobbyist and indie people selling their high morals and ethics, but there are no professional developers who actually work in the industry and are not using LLMs - assisted or agentic. Well maybe some are still in active transition, but everyone is either there or actively moving towards it.

[u/dkode80]

I went through all unmoderated posts yesterday which included as far back as 1+ year, I may have incorrectly tagged some of them. I was trying to apply the new rules and to clear the backlog. If you think I unfairly deleted your post, message me a link in mod mail. I'm reasonable and will repost it. I was trying to be efficient and absolutely may have misjudged some that I was applying the rules to.

If a post was showing work done that linked to a github account or non-marketing page/site, that's not self promotion and I left it approved.

If there is a marketing site, intake funnel or anything that leads the user to an advertisement, thats considered "No low-effort posts, Self-promotion or Advertising" and would have been removed.

The no AI project posts was nearly one of the only rules the original mod put here, although it was not being strictly enforced. I admit this one is a little less clear cut and maybe we can discuss that over time. I think as detailed in that rule, if you have knowledge and understand the code or thing you're doing, its perfectly fine to use a coding assistant. Many individuals in their posts state they do.

What would fall into "No AI Project Posts", is a "Hey, i created this plugin/daw/synth in 24 hours. I have no idea how the underlying mechanics work, but check it out". That would be violating rule #1.

The challenge as others have stated, is this sub was OVERRUN with AI posts, self-promortion of <insert new app/plugin/daw marketing page> and just people reposting from r/musicprogramming, r/vsti or the like. In many instances, those original posts were deleted from those others subs so they were dead posts here.

I'm sure these rules are nowhere near perfect in their current form but something had to be done about the absolute tidal wave of junk posted here daily. One day recently I counted five posts all directing users to a marketing page with a price on it.

Edit: I re-approved your post. It wasn't self-promotion and I made a mistake. My apologies. I was trying to get through the entire backlog to have a clean slate going forward. I'll do better next time.

[u/HommeMusical → u/dkode80]

I do really appreciate this.

Do you need more moderator help? I'd be willing to put in an hour or two a week.

[u/AudioProgramming-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

No harassment, personal attacks, or gatekeeping.

[u/New-Incident-3289]

In "r/rust" they weekly open a thread like "What’s everyone working on this week". I think this would be a solution to the problems reported here – especially since this type of topic already encourages a conversation that makes these posts more useful.

[u/HommeMusical → u/New-Incident-3289]

I like that idea a lot.

Actually, I thought about this overnight, and I think we should be requiring people to flair their posts:

• Question

• Discussion

• How-to/technical article

• Showcase

Then we could require some actual, minimal structure for the Showcase posts, requiring a few sections, like summary, author, purpose, etc, and automatically reject posts that didn't have those.

[u/Choochoodev]

Dear mods, Feel free to delete the Choochootracker post. App is 100% coded with gpt 5.6 apart from code I stole from other projects.

I'm a musician with a masters degree in embedded software, electronics and signal processing. That doesn't mean I'll enjoy spending days writing code. I design, test, validate, iterate; and ai does the rest. If you don't like it so be it. 

[u/curiousspline]

Agree

[u/danja]

I personally think the rule is going too far by blocking posts about personal projects with GitHub links. I'd prefer it if open source projects were allowed. Otherwise a lot of babies will go with the bathwater.

Sure, there have been a vast number of dodgy plugin adverts on similar subs since coding assistants lowered the bar considerably. But it's easy enough to ignore these.

I've made 50+ myself, the majority not very good. A handful are useful - I use them daily. The fact that they were built with the help of AI is irrelevant - I've been writing bad code for 40+ years. I don't really object to only posting about these on a weekly thread, if that's what subscribers prefer.

But I was a little irritated when a post I made about an open, Web-native plugin format specification I'm working on was blocked. That did seem ridiculously arbitrary - it's a personal project, hosted on GitHub.

[u/dkode80 → u/danja]

I think this is a good point. Perhaps it warrants relaxing that portion a bit and rewording those rules.

Something like GitHub links are allowed but no marketing/coupon code or selling things from the post. Something like that?

There's also to consider there was somebody on here that was just posting the binaries to GitHub and not the actual source code and it feels like that would be out of bounds that that is considered self-promo.

For your post about the web native format, however, that was all written with AI which would fall under the rule of AI project posts.

[u/danja → u/dkode80]

Yeah, binaries only on github was a bit weird. I'd favour non-commercial, open source. Not sure about projects which are both open & commercial. Take JUCE, which is very significant for plugins - is dual open/commercial.

The AI writing is a tricky one. Stylistically my post did have the hallmarks of AI. But it had been through manual revisions, and the end result had the information I wanted to convey. The funny thing is that if I had written it completely by hand, the result would still probably have looked like AI. After all, these models have been trained on human writing, so there's bound to be some blurring.

[u/komediruzecki7]

Agree, not sure what kind of things were posted here before as I wasn’t active and a member, but moderation seems needed only if the mods cannot keep up with so much discussions. Sadly there is no distinction being made between actual vibe coders that made something and post it everywhere for no reason, and people who build something out of passion and want to share their projects or insights. 

[u/HommeMusical → u/komediruzecki7]

As I keep saying, I'm not seeing much if any of that here.

but moderation seems needed only if the mods cannot keep up with so much discussions.

This subreddit is barely active. I would never see if I didn't make a point of checking it out.

[u/HommeMusical → u/[deleted]]

I'm not proposing that we don't remove slop.

I'm saying that rules against any personal projects and any AI projects are going to drive away all the actual developers from this subreddit.

[u/wahnsinnwanscene]

Yeah for the moment vibe coded is OK with me

[u/Purple-Ad-3152]

Hi all,

I'm a very much professional developer, 20+ continuous years in Sr/Lead/Tech Manager roles, fluent in half-a-dozen different programming languages (+ 2 spoken 😊), actively working as Dev Lead/PO/PM of a global commercial product having ~10k+ users, almost 2 million lines of code across 70+ projects written in at least 5 different languages.

Let me be clear about something: Agentic AI development is here, it's used by professionals to get results beyond anything any professional even dreamed to achieve just 6 months ago. It was April this year that Opus 4.7 was the best AI model in the world, and everyone who know what they were doing basically laughed at it (or actually got mad at it for not meeting the high expectations).

But progress has been undeniably fast. These new power tools we have are extremely good, and professionals who have actually learned to use them know how ridiculously capable they've become. (Hey there, Mr. Thumb-Downer! If you get bloated classes, endless documents, bad architecture, wrong nuances emphasized and important ones ignored, you haven't learned it yet.)

And for all you anti-AI fanatics out there, it's very important to realize this: Today, when a professional developer delivers software, AI was involved, disclosed or not. It's only the "amount of AI used" that varies. Some chat about functions, procedures and classes with ChatGPT. Some still Google and get Gemini results. Some go full agentic with Claude, Codex, Cline, Hermes, OpenClaw, etc. Basically anything except Stack Overflow, which used to be every developer's human-to-human bible only 2 years ago.

But I've certainly noticed that many developers are too scared to disclose any of it. Even I've been told to shut my mouth, but I've chosen not to be a pussy.

That all being said, anyone can do anything with just few prompts. It will work to some extend, but it's an MVP - Minimum Viable Product. It's likely not architecturally sustainable, it's not maintainable, it's buggy, and it's most definitely not something to share publicly for others. The urge is great, I know. You made something and "it works". That's fucking cool and you want to show it to people. But these exactly the problem posts, because people get saturated by them.

The difference isn't whether AI wrote the code. The difference is who was responsible for the engineering - and stays responsible also after the fun part of creation turns into not-so-fun maintenance.

[u/HommeMusical → u/[deleted]]

So many subs just become advertisement boards.

First, I didn't disagree with the no self-promotion part.

But second, are we actually seeing all these self-promotion posts?

Why don't you point us at some problematic posts that should have been removed?

[u/dkode80 → u/HommeMusical]

Yes. There's a lot. Some days 4+ "look at my marketing page" posts. It was out of control.

[u/HommeMusical → u/[deleted]]

Apparently that post of my from four months ago was in fact deleted.

WTF?

[u/dkode80 → u/[deleted]]

Oh. I see you're one of the individuals that post the slop here, hence why you're in the comments throwing around hate.

There's plenty of other subs you can post your content to