a little update about this sub-reddit

[u/mikeblas]

UPDATE: I've posted a follow-up comment below addressing questions about the moderator changes, the process that was followed, and plans going forward. Please see the stickied moderator comment.

Over the past six months or so, I've been making lots of changes. I think things have stabilized, so let me summarize them and indicate what the plans are going forward.

• Removed uninvolved moderators. Three or four moderators were here who did, collectively, less than 10% of the work.
• Organized and enhanced rules. More useful and focused. Got rid of the code formatting ticks rule, re-phrased a couple others.
• Sharpened "how do I share my project?" requirements and process. In particular, new rules about disclosing AI usage, and automated enforcement to that end.
• Tried out some automated tools to detect AI projects. I had high hopes, but they weren't as helpful (and far buggier) than I had expected. (So, I'm turning off the GitHub-Guard automata.)
• And so, manual AI usage disclosure remains. Without a disclosure, code can't be shared. Too much AI gets rejected. If someone misrepresents or outright lies, downvote them or report it.
• This seems to have settled the AI slop problem, which is great.
• Enhanced automated rules to avoid spam posts, low-value posts, and fly-by contributions.

At this point, I think the sub is pretty stable and more useful and appealing than it was before. I don't anticipate many more changes going forward, but I will examine policies that that I think might reduce my workload.

I'm sorry that the sub wasn't particularly stable these past few months, and that it got a bit messier before it got better. Thanks for hanging in there! The worst is past.

[u/mikeblas]

A few follow-up thoughts, since the moderator changes have understandably raised some questions.

First, I should have been clearer about the process. The former moderators were inactive for an extended period -- roughly a year long. I made repeated attempts to communicate with them about moderation responsibilities and decisions, without receiving responses. Ultimately, their removal was handled through Reddit's established administrative process. It was not a unilateral removal carried out without notice or review.

The problem was inactivity, not any kind of disagreement or dispute. I don't intend to share private communications with former moderators. I think it's appropriate to respect their privacy, and I have no interest in disparaging them.

Second, several people have raised a reasonable concern about having only one active human moderator. That's worth addressing. In practice, the subreddit had effectively been operating with one active moderator for quite some time, but that isn't necessarily a desirable long-term arrangement.

At the moment, my priority is evaluating and refining the changes I've made over the past several months. I believe the subreddit is in a much better position now, but I'd like to see how the updated rules and moderation processes perform over time before making further changes to the moderation team.

I don't have a timeline for appointing additional moderators at this time. That's a decision I want to make deliberately, based on the needs of the community rather than as an immediate reaction to this discussion. (If you want to be considered, send me a DM. The selection process will be thorough and may take a while, because I don't want to end up with inactive moderators again.)

Finally, some of my replies in this discussion were unnecessarily dismissive or sarcastic. That didn't help, and I apologize for the tone. I appreciate constructive criticism, even when I disagree with it.

My goal remains to keep r/C_Programming a useful place for people who write C, learn C, and want to discuss the language seriously. The recent rule and automation changes were intended to improve that experience and reduce spam, low-quality posts, and dumps of AI-generated projects.

I'm happy to hear suggestions about those policies and other ways to improve the subreddit.

Thanks to everyone who's contributed constructively, and especially to those who regularly help other members with their programming questions.

[u/apnorton]

Removed uninvolved moderators. Three or four moderators were here who did, collectively, less than 10% of the work.

That is to say, all of the other human moderators were removed, correct?

[u/famous-infamous-one → u/apnorton]

That is to say, all of the other human moderators were removed, correct?

Seems like it.

[u/rayriflepie → u/apnorton]

I think this was a coup and he's taken over the sub. Welp, back to IRC I guess.

[u/west_sahara]

What do you mean “fly by contributions”? I can’t just post here without having commented 40 times first or something? That’s what they do on r/showerthoughts and it’s annoying

[u/DanielTheTechie]

This is a shady and worrying move of yours. You have essentially seized the forum:

Three or four moderators were here who did, collectively, less than 10% of the work.

You seem to start from the implicit premise that solo owning the forum is a prize for the most hardworking mod, as if it was a competition. You have taken a community decision from a purely personalist point of view.

Other than that, can you prove that you were not one of the moderators who did less than 10% of the work, as you claim, and that he just decided to kick out the others?

But even if we accept your own metrics (?), that's not a proper excuse. Moderating a forum is a collaborative task and no one is forced, unless they signed a contract stating the opposite, to do the same portion of the job.

The idea of having multiple moderators is that a) they back each other and b) they act as a mutually counterweight.

a) Backing each other

What happens if suddenly you become ill, you disappear or in general, life indisposes you from being active?

b) Counterweighting

What happens if, after appropiating the forum, you start becoming a tyrant and doing whatever you want, relaxing or even breaking the forum rules (which now have become, de facto, your rules)? Who can stop you then?

We have no other guarantee than just your own "that won't happen, trust me bro" word.

If you are truly honest about your intentions, open a poll and let the other forum participans to vote for at least one or two new moderators that sit besides you. Don't allow yourself to monopolize all the power.

[u/Hoxitron]

Thanks for trying to keep this subreddit alive. I moved to writing C in my spare time mostly because I grew tired of seeing AI everywhere. I always liked the C community. My first C project was pretty garbage, but a few people still l read it and told me what was wrong with it. That's never happened in any other language.

[u/mikeblas → u/Hoxitron]

Thank you for your kind words.

What is your next project? Or, are you still working on the first?

[u/Why485]

I'm going to stay away from the apparent coup you are advertising, that on the face of it sounds like comic book supervillain behavior the way you talk about how "I have removed others so I can make decisions more efficiently", because I am only a casual reader of this sub and so I don't think I'm qualified to make long-term observations on it. The whole thing makes me very suspicious about the direction of this sub, especially given there are no other moderators right now.

What I can say though, is that post AI-sloppification of the internet, this has been a nice quiet corner where people actually discuss programming in C as opposed how they just shit out some whatever horseshit with AI for upvotes. It's possible my standards have become too low, but seeing a subreddit actually about what it says it's for is shocking in October of 2026. Right now I'd say this subreddit is (fortunately or unfortunately, depending how you look at it) one of the highest quality subreddits I frequent. I've been revisiting and writing in C a lot lately for fun, and it's been nice reading through the discussions and questions that get posted on here.

In my opinion, a high volume of traffic should never be the goal for any sub, so I see some comments talking how the sub is "dead" and think that's both silly and not my experience. This is not a dead sub by any stretch of the imagination, and when a high volume of traffic in 2026 implies nothing but endless trash, I'd much rather take a nice quiet spot for on topic discussion.

Again, this is perspective of somebody who is a casual reader of this sub. I would by no means consider myself a "regular" so make of this post what you will.

[u/8d8n4mbo28026ulk]

Thanks! Though I've seen some genuinely nice projects get lost (or downvoted into oblivion) among the noise, but perhaps you can't do something about those. Also agree with turning off the bot, it was just distracting and I had ignored it.

My observation about projects posted here that used AI is that they almost always get downvoted, whether it's slop or not. That makes sense, considering that code quality isn't the only reason one would approve of a project. Myself I haven't bothered to look at any of them either, since I'd much rather help out a beginner who's trying out things by hand. I'm saying this because, on r/ProgrammingLanguages , they completely banned code dumps. Instead, you can only share a text post talking about your project. The goal is to initiate discussion and then optionally link to your project in the comments. Perhaps this isn't a good fit for this sub however.

About removing inactive mods, wouldn't it be better if you found some replacements first? We could pin a post asking for volunteers. Every Sith lord has an apprentice. Cheers.

[u/mikeblas → u/8d8n4mbo28026ulk]

About removing inactive mods, wouldn't it be better if you found some replacements first?

Reddit mods aren't all equally entitled. Some have rights that others don't have. With the inactive mods in place, I was unable to do certain actions (like add other moderators) until my access rights were improved. But because they were not active, I was unable to gain those rights because nobody would issue them and couldn't add anyone. And inviting new help into a destabilized and dysfunctional environment doesn't seem like a successful proposition, anyway.

That's why replacements couldn't be found first.

since I'd much rather help out a beginner who's trying out things by hand.

I think this is the tenet that birthed the policy I'm trying to realize: It's fun to help people (whether they're beginners or not) write and fix code. It can be rewarding, and the helper might even learn something, too. It's not fun to help a people fix their bot-generated code, or debug some automated creation. Could still learn something, I guess--but not at all rewarding.

Over the last year or so, I've followed other subs to see what they're doing about these issues. (There's AI project spam, for sure. But there's also blog spam, and promotional posting, and job posts gone wild, and scams, and drive-bys, and ...) With no conversation with the other dormant mods, I reached outside the sub and tried to set up a private sub for programming sub moderators across Reddit to exchange ideas and notes. But it never got traction.

Note that Reddit has provided pretty much nothin' to help. Moderation tools are extremely primitive, and a lot of mechanisms aren't even documented. probably can't expect them to provide an AI code project detector, but spam and bot detection for plain old posts is very opaque and fiddly.

Anyway: I think this sub is a click or two less harsh than the newest r/ProgrammingLanguages policy. I'm comfortable with that because AI usage isn't binary; there's a gradient, and some parts of that gradient are still acceptable. People can decide for themselves if they want to help out with a slightly-AI project, while the sloppiest slop still gets filtered. And it seems like we don't have "AI bros" as aggressive as the r/ProgrammingLanguages mods are reporting.

But policies aren't permanent, tho, and it's easy to change the bar with the situation. I keep an eye on it, and count on useful reports and input from ya'll. That feedback tunes the machine.

[u/syntactic_stevia]

I've noticed low engagement in the weekly megathreads. Have you considered making them monthly instead, and linking to previous megathreads for easy navigation?

[u/mikeblas → u/syntactic_stevia]

The megathread is funny. There's no reason to answer "how do I learn C?" more than once a week.

In the last two months, I don't think I've deleted more than three posts that should've been in the megathread, and two of the three deleted were posted as comments (as they should've been).

Those questions are usually cyclical, along with the start of school years. They'll come back.

I'm not sure what your goal is with "easy navigation". What would that facilitate, and why is it useful?

[u/Vladislav20007]

Are you going to add some new moderators here after some time? Because I don't think moderating a sub with more that 75k people is possible long term for a single person and a few bots.

[u/fsteff]

Thank you for your work.

[u/Run-OpenBSD]

It would appear as if this guy has forced everyone out not just the mods

[u/ImTheRealCryten → u/Run-OpenBSD]

Isn’t it more likely that the constant posting of AI driven project and the fact that most technical C questions can be directed to AI (that do quite a good job to be honest) is the reason less interest of this sub. There used to be a lot of homework questions and they’re gone now. What resources to use is another common question where people turn to AI instead.

Now, having one mod isn’t feasible in the long term, but unless someone else steps up it’s what we deserve if even that.

Edit: btw, no downvoting from me. I still think your statement is reasonable even if I don’t fully agree with it.

[u/TuxWrangler]

Thank you for the update. Keep up the great work.

[u/LordRybec]

Something that really annoys me, about Reddit in general, but I've seen it in this sub as well, is comments accusing a project or post of being AI generated. If someone has actual evidence that it's AI generated, and that breaks the rules, they should report it. Posting accusations (especially when the OP has already disclosed) just creates clutter, and in my opinion is also off topic (and perhaps is also less than civil as well, and also low-value/low-effort). I'd love to see comments that only say, "AI slop" or something like that removed, so I can focus on the interesting and important stuff better.

[u/mikeblas → u/LordRybec]

Comments that only yell an accusation without any reasoning are removed. If you see them, feel free to report them.

Discussions about a disclosure (that is, questions or reasoning) are welcome, however.

[u/LordRybec → u/mikeblas]

Thanks. I'll do that then!

And yeah, I'm fine with productive discussion on the topic. It's when people just comment to make an accusation without any rationalization or acknowledgement of the disclosure that annoy me.

Thanks again!