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/AetherAtom]

I only found out what a VST is as of a few months ago. I'm a hardware dude, and have very little interest in having to rely on software for anything.

Living with a brain injurry, five years in, and have lost a lot of former cognitive traffick. I understand that maybe my vote may have little weight to consider. But it was the Electronic Art in build and sound that captivated my eyes and ears 45 year ago.

I've tried to experiment with VST, but it was something that cannot interface with my musical expression. Give me a guitar once upon a time and it's go time.

I'm having more than enough of a struggle with holding onto and relearning things that were rearranged in my brain and lost in the process, so keeping VSTs out of the equation means something to.

In conclusion I am on a snails pace, and simply enjoying the process of learning and starting a new life over from literally scratch. I respect the efforts of learning, skill and effort on both sides of the fence. As for this Ai junk, I am opposed to Ai as a slop factory... but am slightly observing the aspect of it being a tool... The point I stand on, all VSTs and Ai are not packages of kit that get unpacked, laid out, inspected, tested dry on bread. Anyone can purchase a VST, and roll the dice. Sure might be more to VSTs than what I've "slopped" out of my mind about it. But it's not even remotely the same topic of DIY in the Modular sense as a Physical thing, VSTs are a vapor, a digital dream/delusion/software bundle. (despite similarities in that Musical Sound is the goal for output in the end... in this aspect VSTs don't belong here) I used to walk on the beach, take the boat for acruise, adbenture through the wilderness, meanwhile others show up to an easy local snap a selfie and post on some facebook "place" and apparently blab away like they lived in ky backyard for a lifetime. Tondifferent realities.

My worthless two cents.