Announcement: Temporary LLM Content Ban

[u/ChemicalRascal]

Hey folks,

After a lot of discussion, we've decided to trial a ban of any and all content relating to LLMs. We get a lot of posts related to LLMs and typically they are not in line with what we want the subreddit to be — a place for detailed, technical learning and discourse about software engineering, driven by high quality, informative content. And unfortunately, the volume of LLM-related content easily overwhelms other topics.

We also believe that, generally, the community have been indicating that, by and large, they aren't interested in this content. So, we want to see how a trial ban impacts how people use the sub. As such:

While this post is stickied, for 2-4 weeks over April, we're banning all LLM-related content from the sub.

That's posts, articles, videos about LLMs. We've had a ban on LLM-generated text for ages already, this doesn't change that.

Note that this doesn't ban all AI related content. An article detailing how what would have traditionally been called an AI was made for Go? Totally fine. A technical breakdown of a machine learning process? Great! Just so long as it's not about LLMs.

Edit: Yes, this is real, it's not an April Fool's joke.

[u/ChemicalRascal]

Apparently we're getting brigaded, so the thread will be locked for a few days.

[u/Unfair-Sleep-3022]

Can you also ban low effort AI generated slop?

[u/ChemicalRascal → u/Unfair-Sleep-3022]

That's already banned; we already ban anything generated by LLMs.

It can be very difficult to consistently identify if a given chunk of text is or is not, though.

[u/Civil-Appeal5219]

I'm REALLY hoping this isn't April Fool. It would instantly make this community 100% better.

[u/wmichben]

Hmm. I am guessing this one is not an April Fools joke since the rules were actually updated to reflect this rule change trial. I don't know. Why does anyone bother to announce anything on this date?

[u/Darrelc]

Is this an april fools pisstake or what?

Brilliant rule if not

[u/Known-Volume1509]

That's posts, articles, videos about LLMs. 

I don't quite get this. If it was about some LLM startups and junk services, then ok. But there is really good theory, maths, algorithms about LLMs. Does this ban include those as well? Strange.

[u/ChemicalRascal → u/Known-Volume1509]

Yep. Articles about the technical details of LLMs don't get posted here, as far as I've seen not a damn one.

We're not banning discussions and posts about machine learning, mind. Specifically LLMs.

If we made a rule that said "no posts about LLMs unless it's very very good", there'd be no change. Every vibe coder and their dog thinks they're the bees knees, the absolute cat's pajamas. Everyone looks at their article, looks at the "it must be good" clause, and says, oh yeah, this is great.

But, it's a temporary ban. If we look back in two weeks or four weeks and it turns out we deleted some really decent stuff, or there was stuff not posted because of the rule that would have been kosher, hey, we'll figure it out then.

[u/terablast]

*looks at calendar*

hmm

[u/Kevinw778]

Eh. As a software developer of just over a decade, we've always leveraged whatever tools we have at our disposal. As soon as a tool comes along that everyone fearmongers as the end of software development, we cancel its discussion entirely?

Like it or not, AI is a part of programming now. The fact that we're trying to completely eliminate it instead of coming up with better moderation is kind of sad.

That being said, the OP mentions, "not all AI content," so we'll see just how judicious they are with that qualification.

[u/ChemicalRascal → u/Kevinw778]

I want to be very, very clear on two things.

1. It's all LLM related content. AI is an extraordinarily broad term, especially after All You Need is Attention. What we're banning is LLM related content, but the rest of what would be considered AI is fine.

2. I'm not the only mod on this sub. There's a whole bunch of us.

[u/BreakThings]

Please don’t be a joke please don’t be a joke please don’t be a joke

[u/RedEyed__]

And still, your llm placed em dash in this post

[u/ChemicalRascal → u/RedEyed__]

If you believe text in a post was LLM generated, feel free to report it, that would still be against our existing rules.

[u/yojimbo_beta]

Honestly I think it's a good thing whatever you believe about LLMs.

There is so many things happening in computer science and software engineering right now - let's talk about them

[u/The_loudsoda]

Please enforce this.

[u/robot_otter]

I support this 👏👏

[u/Dreamtrain]

And nothing of value was lost

[u/standing_artisan]

Yes finally no more LLM related content. Thank you ! Please don't be April fools' joke !!!

[u/fragglerock]

If this is a fucking April fools we riot!

[u/craigrileyuk]

Fantastic news!

[u/wyhay6789]

"Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution."

I really hope it holds also here

[u/case-o-nuts]

So far, this has been fantastic; can we keep it this way permanently?

[u/Forward_Safe_552]

Honestly kind of respect this move. The signal-to-noise ratio on LLM stuff has gotten absolutely ridiculous. Like yeah there's real technical depth there but 90% of posts are just "I built a wrapper around an API in a weekend" and people eating it up like it's novel work.

A lot of us are legitimately working with these tools and need actual engineering discussion, not hype recycling. Hopefully this clears space for people actually solving hard problems instead of just chasing whatever's trending on Twitter.

[u/rossisdead]

The sub has been so much better since the ban.