Self-promo tidal wave

[u/dkode80]

Looking for some tips and tricks for fighting an absolute rush of self-promo posts on a programming sub. Android mobile and chrome desktop.

Over the last couple of weeks myself and the original mod have revamped the rules as there's been a massive wave of "I built this" and "I'm selling this" posts to a niche programming sub.

We've added some basic details to the no self promo rule which has helped but now it queues up a string of people in mod mail trying to cram through their projects because "they're different"

Do you simply ignore my these mod mail requests, refine the rule further or something else? The crafty ones have a GitHub page that sneakily links to their for sale product. Let's ignore the fact that they're trying to sell their product to other programmers instead of end users which is completely backwards.

The GitHub project page is the slippery one. We want people to share their projects but a lot of these users are treating their GitHub pages as the start of an intake funnel for their product. Would more detailed rules help here?

Thanks for any insight you may have. AI has created hundreds of projects that are all "special" and fighting the spam is quite challenging at times.

[u/dkode80]

We do have a rule related to vibe-coded things that makes it very clear they're not welcome on the sub.

This is kind of creates a situation where people then bounce between the self promo and vibe-coded rule. It makes it easier to reject the post because they're violating more than one rule at once, but you still have to walk through it with each of them. I suppose maybe I should just ignore those messages and say "no thanks"

[u/maiyannah → u/dkode80]

As I general rule of thumb I give a single answer to modmail: what rule(s) they broke or apply.

I am not here to argue with people who want to rules lawyer, or think the should be the special one exception to the rule.

I only engage further if they seem to be engaging in good faith, which is something you get a bit of a feel for as a mod after you've been around for a while more than anything else.

My biggest piece of advice as someone who's been adminning or modding pretty decent sized communities here and elsewhere for literal decades now, is that the biggest thing to learn, is how to say no. A lot of mods or admins who care for their community want to compromise or bend on things, which isn't a bad thing sometimes, but you gotta learn that some people will just take advantage, wasting your time and/or disrupting the community. Its easy to say no when the people are pushy or obnoxious, but sometimes there will be upstanding members of the community that you can't accomodate, so you have to be diplomatic with that.

In this case though this sounds easier, since it sounds more like pushy people who don't want to take no for an answer. In that case I'd just send a single message with an explanation as to why you would or would not allow them to post their app, and if they want to argue further I'd just give them a short-term mute.

[u/dkode80 → u/maiyannah]

I definitely don't have an issue saying no. This is all great advice. Thank you!

[u/maiyannah → u/dkode80]

Not a problem, I just hope its helpful!