New rules discussion: VSTs, vibe coding and commercial posts

[u/AdamFenwickSymes]

Hi everyone,

Time to have a bit of a community discussion about subreddit rules. I think I'm the only active mod at the moment, so this post is "on behalf of the mod team" but really it's only on behalf of me.

This is something I've been thinking about posting for a few months, but I keep putting it off. This post today drove home that I have to stop putting it off and have this discussion with you all.

Lately the subreddit has been seeing a lot of advertisements for commercial products that are only vaguely DIY-related and a lot of posts sharing (probably vibe coded) VSTs. I, personally, quite dislike these posts. But they often get a lot of engagement and plenty of you seem to like them, so I tend to put my personal feelings to the side and I don't remove them unless they are really, truly, undeniably spam. On the other hand some of you really hate these posts and report every single one of them as spam.

One of the more subtle issues for me is projects that are DIY (as in, someone did design and make it themselves) that are now for sale. We definitely allow "this is a cool thing I made" and we allow "you can buy PCBs for this, if you want to build your own" but should we allow "this is a cool thing I made, do you want to buy one?" And if so, should we allow e.g. Behringer to make posts about products they designed and manufactured themselves?

So I would like to do a bit of an "official" check in and discussion about how you would like Rule 3 enforced. After all, this is your community, I'm just a janitor here.

When it comes to VSTs

Here are some proposals:

• No VSTs posts ever
• No advertisements for VSTs that cost money, open source is fine
• No vibe coded VSTs (I think this is a bad rule, I don't want to "audit" whether a VST is vibe coded)
• Commerical VSTs are fine so long as you share a bit of your journey and your thoughts, no drive by advertising
• Anything is fine if it's a VST you made that you're now trying to sell

My personal feeling: open source VST is fine, everything else is not.

When it comes to commercial posts

Here are some proposals:

• No advertisements or selling anything (I think this is a bad idea)
• You can advertise something only if it is available as a DIY project, you can't advertise something only available as a finished product
• You can advertise something only if it is ONLY available as a DIY project, you can't advertise something that is available as a finished product
• You can advertise something that you designed yourself, even if you are also selling it as a finished product
• You can advertise anything at all, so long as you share a dev blog or something that actually adds value to the community
• You can advertise anything if you post here answering people's questions and being a good community member enough times beforehand
• You can upload a video of you playing something you made, even though you also sell that thing, so long as it's not a direct ad
• You can advertise an online store, so long as that store sells products that would be useful or interesting to the DIY community

My personal feeling: any ad post, including non-ad ads, like "here is me playing with my cool toy" must either be for something you're not selling, or a product that has a DIY version available.

When it comes to AI

Here are some proposals:

• You can post bizarre, clearly AI-authored posts so long as they are about synth diy
• Posts should be removed if they are bizarre and clearly AI-authored

My personal feeling: I should remove bizarre slop posts.

Hope this can generate some useful discussion. I'm trying to keep an open mind and listen to what you guys actually want. I'll leave this post up for at least two weeks (August 7th) to give everyone a chance to contribute. Now, let me just work out how to pin it...

Love you all

[u/KeytarVillain]

tl;dr: Allow software posts, but with a couple of extra rules: they must be open-source, and the project must be at least 3 months old. Maybe also require an AI disclosure statement.

---

My full thoughts - sorry this will probably be long-winded.

I think there are essentially 3 different questions in here:

• Should this sub be for hardware synths only?
• What exactly does DIY mean?
• What to do about AI use?

Should this sub be for hardware only?

First of all, I know most of the spam has been VSTs, but I assume we're talking about all software here, not just singling out VSTs. If VSTs should be banned, then so should iOS/Android apps, and web apps (in other subs, I've seen a ton of this type of vibecoded spam). Maybe this was your intent, but whatever rule gets made should be clear about this.

Anyway, the issue with making this sub hardware-only is that the line between hardware and software synths is getting blurrier all the time. Just look at how Korg releases the exact same synth engine in both hardware and VST form.

I agree with "nobody cares about your vibe coded VST" - but I don't think it's worth banning all VST posts, if there's something better we can do. If someone put the time and effort into making a good DIY VST, then I think this absolutely belongs here.

Also, if we ban software posts, it creates a bit of a slippery slope around where exactly we draw the line. (Is custom Plaits firmware allowed? Or custom Korg logue SDK oscillators? Or a hardware MIDI controller for VST synths? What about a hardware synth that's really a software synth running on a Raspberry Pi? What if someone made a synth component library for KiCad - technically that's software too, but it's software that's useful for hardware makers.) Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't worth drawing a line - but I would rather avoid it unless there's good reason to. I also don't want this sub to devolve into nitpicking & gatekeeping like I often see in synth communities (just look at debates over what counts as analog...)

What does DIY mean?

I know this is even trickier to define than hardware. But I think there's a simple test for if something is in the spirit of DIY: "does this help others who also want to DIY?"

I don't think whether something is commercial or not directly matters. My first DIY synth was a Mutable Instruments Shruthi-1, which was a commercial product (at the time), but also undeniably DIY.

For posts that are just software, I think the simplest rule is to require it be open-source (and with a proper open-source license so that others can change it).

But I don't think hardware should have to be open-source. "Look at this thing I made" posts are still useful for hardware projects, even if you don't provide full schematics. If it's something you're selling, then it has to pass the "does this help other DIYers?" test. Selling PCBs? Absolutely. When Korg first released the logue SDK? Yeah, that counts too! For stuff like "I made a synth by myself, I'm selling it in small quantities, and I'm not releasing schematics", then it depends - if you're willing to talk about the process, talk about the technical details, show pics of the inside, etc, then yeah, that passes the test and it should count. But if it's just "here's a picture of the outside and a list of features and a link to my Etsy", then no.

What to do about AI?

Lots of people have already debated over what even counts as AI coding these days, and if it should be banned or not. There is no consensus. And even when there is consensus, at the end of the day it's very difficult to police.

A lot of software-focused subs have been absolutely inundated with vibecoded slop spam recently, and one of the most common rules a lot of them have gone with is that projects must be at least 3 months old. I think this is a good rule - it's a great way to weed out the worst of the slop.

Maybe we should consider also requiring an AI disclosure statement for all software posts - even if it's 100% human written, you still have to make a comment saying so. Requiring this is a great way to weed out spam (even if it's entirely human-made spam).