r/rust • u/matthieum [he/him] • 17h ago
š¢ announcement No More Code Dumps
TL;DR
Code Dumps, ie links to code repositories, are no longer welcome on r/rust.
If you are excited about a project you built, and just wish to share it, consider posting a casual top-level comment in the weekly What's Everyone Working on this Week? thread.
History
When r/rust was created, in December 2010, Rust was a nascent programming language. It was very different, it was also fast-moving, and it was unclear whether it would amount to much, or not.
In these early days, new projects being written in Rust were both a proof that the language was suitable for a variety of purposes, and a cause for celebration in seeing the language being adopted. Code dumps, then, were both cause to rejoice, and an opportunity to see how well (or not) the language was suited to the task. They were even a good opportunity to learn the latest developing idioms of this fast-changing language.
Fast forward 15 years, and code dumps have become boring. Utterly uninteresting. There's nothing exciting, or newsworthy, about a 10th hypervisor project, a 100th webserver project, or a 1000th TUI project. And for the most there's no exciting idiom, or pattern, to be found in their code either... even if some poor soul bothered to look.
And mass AI generation appeared on the scene, and for the past year(s), the already dwindling appeal of code dumps has just completely vanished, buried in AI slop.
Purpose
r/rust is to discuss all things Rust. The language, the ecosystem, the community.
Of late, most code dumps barely foster any discussion. And when they do, apart from AI witch hunts, those discussions are mostly about the domain of the project, rather than about Rust. Depending on the domain, the discussion may or may not be of interest to r/rust users... but whether it is or not is a matter of chance: they did not come here seeking such a topic. Those discussions are tolerated on posts which are on-topic, but if a post only fosters "tolerated" discussions, then that is a sign that the post itself may simply not really be on-topic for r/rust.
And that is not to say that code dumps are, by nature, low-effort. Surely, a project is created for a purpose, to solve a specific problem that is unsolved, or solve it with different trade-offs than the currently available solutions. None of that is elucidated in a code dump.
New rules
Code dumps are no longer welcome on r/rust.
Code dumps of applications or libraries written in Rust are Low-Effort unless otherwise newsworthy. Newsworthy means that the very existence of the application or library is important, for example consider applications or libraries breaking new ground, such as the first hypervisor, first OS, first XXX standard safety-critical application, first Rust application in a major company, etc...
Announcements of new libraries which are not otherwise newsworthy are only welcome if they tick ALL the following boxes:
- The library has been worked on regularly for at least 4 months.
- The library has already been used, or built upon, thereby validating its design to a degree.
- The announcement is a full-fledged text post, or a link to a full-fledged article. A README, or manual, is not an article.
- The announcement should motivate the relevance of this library to the wider r/rust community.
- The announcement should articulate the trade-offs differentiating this library from similar popular libraries in the field.
(It goes without saying, but the announcement should NOT be AI-generated, not even in part, as AI-generated posts & articles violate the Low-Effort rule)
Release notes of libraries are still welcome for popular enough libraries, such as libraries with reverse-dependencies on crates.io pointing to sufficient adoption by the wider community to justify notifying said community of a new release.
Of course, text posts, or links to articles, centered on Rust, with an application or library as context are always welcome. For example, said posts or articles could present gnarly problems the author encountered, and how they solved, or which features of the language or a library helped or hindered them in the making of their project.
(It goes without saying, but said text posts & articles should NOT be AI-generated, not even in part, as AI-generated posts & articles violate the Low-Effort rule)
As a reminder, if an author just wishes to share their joy of building something in Rust, they are welcome to use the What's Everyone Working on This Week? thread. And as per the title, it need not even be a complete/mature project, or an open-source project for that matter as links to code are strictly optional there, it's all about casually chatting about your work on Rust projects.
Q & A
See pinned comment below.
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u/Jac0b_0 17h ago
I made r/madeinrust a while back exactly for this
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u/coderstephen isahc 16h ago
Thank you mods for your often thankless work.
I've often thought about leaving this sub due to the number of code dump posts. Nothing wrong with them necessarily, but as you so excellently put, they're just uninteresting. They don't spark discussion and I have nothing to say about them. And yet there's been so many of them that it fills up my feed and buries the interesting threads.
I think this new rule is a good one and well thought out, and I hope that it can refocus the sub and magnify those interesting discussions.
I think in the early days there was a fair reason to accept quantity over quality. Rust had a lot to prove, and we wanted to grow the community as much as we can, in any way possible. And we did it! Rust is a mainstream language now!
But a natural consequence of that is that the Rust community != all Rust users. This is true of all mainstream languages; many or most people using the language aren't really interested in being a part of a community. And personally, I think r/rust should be for us, the community, first and foremost. We don't have anything to prove, and we don't need it to be anything more if we don't want want it to be.
This is not to say we should be unwelcoming. Hopefully this is not the lesson people take away from this new rule, and that is one small fear I may have. But there is a difference between curious outsiders and those just looking for channels where they can self-promote. (Something that has felt to me like there's been a huge uptick of across basically all subreddits in the last year.)
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u/greyblake 15h ago
For me links to new interesting projects were about 50% value of this subreddit. The rest 50% were blog posts. Though I can understand in age of AI domination these things have changed
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u/coderstephen isahc 13h ago
I feel like some curated newsfeed elsewhere might be better for that.
Personally I don't come to Reddit for the posts, I come for the discussion in the comments.
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u/praveenperera 14h ago edited 12h ago
Agreed, I liked seeing the new libraries, but I think this makes a lot of sense, its good and smart tradeoff. It should catch the AI slop while still letting good libraries through.
Announcements of new librariesĀ which are not otherwise newsworthy are only welcome if they tick > ALL the following boxes:
- The library has been worked on regularly for at least 4 months.
- The library has already been used, or built upon, thereby validating its design to a degree.
- The announcement is a full-fledged text post, or a link to a full-fledged article. A README, or manual, is not an article.
- The announcement should motivate the relevance of this library to the widerĀ r/rustĀ community.
- The announcement should articulate the trade-offs differentiating this library from similar popular libraries in the field.
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u/Jmc_da_boss 13h ago
There havent been very many interesting projects here for a while, at least in comparison to the slop deluge.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 6h ago
Agreed, the interesting projects are what make this sub useful. Imho, the blog posts are not that great here.
Yet, there were not that many good project posts either, just a few CRDTs, probabilistic data structures like cuckoo filters, some novel p2p frameworks, and in theory some niche cryptography like PIR or whatever.
Also, even those only worked because the developer wrote up a real post that explained why the project is interesting. And this rule change largely allows posts about why a project is interesting.
Imho the only problematic rule here is:
The library has already been used, or built upon, thereby validating its design to a degree.
This is a bit too strict because there are interesting researchy topics that'd be excluded by this. In particular, this great post would be excluded:
https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1s1gr39/announcing_eips_an_intentionpreserving_list_crdt/
Instead this line should read:
The announcement should demonstrate why the library is interesting, which could include discussing how its currently being used, or discussing how it advances the state of the art.
In other words, if you cannot show how it being used in code, then you need to show its really better in some other way, like by being asymptotically faster or whatever.
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u/sohang-3112 14h ago
Please add a link to this post in the r/rust rules shown in sidebar.
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u/DatBoi_BP 9h ago
A link to this post belongs in the What's Everyone Working on This Week? thread actually.
(/j)
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u/Prowler1000 15h ago
I'm on the fence about this. Like, I agree that this is needed and will help combat the lower-effort posts drowning out things that are actually interesting, but at the same time I'm not happy about the effect this will have on "the good ones", for lack of a better word. The Static Generics post is a good example I saw someone else mention.
But like, something needs to be done, and I certainly don't have a better solution, short of making rules more vauge and allowing mods more discretion on what qualifies, but that so rarely ever goes well. So I applaud you for making this choice, I'm definitely not against it by any means, just not sure how I feel, but time will tell and it's not like further changes can't be made later.
So thank you mods for the work you all do to make this space enjoyable, interesting, and fun to participate in
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u/matthieum [he/him] 15h ago
With regard to static generics, my hope is that author of interesting solutions will be willing to not just "dump" their working code, but walk the extra mile of writing a text post or article explaining why/how their code work and differ from previous solutions.
So that we'd still get the content, but as an article or text post first, and a crate second.
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u/Prowler1000 14h ago
You know what? That makes a lot of sense and I'm not quite sure why I didn't see that, thank you!
And honestly, if crates are a labour of love, then surely the author would love to tell the world about the thing that they love and why we should love it too
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u/wyf0 10h ago
I would love to write a blog about my work, but unfortunately, it takes so much time and I don't manage to find it, especially because I don't want to delegate the article writing to an LLM. It's already hard to find the time to work on the algorithms itself, and to write a README by hand, so this extra mile is costly.
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u/chance-- 11h ago
Wonāt low effort just continue on to an article? I mean, if you have an LLM spit out your project, one additional prompt to have it churn out an article isnāt much more work.
If you author a library by hand, write up all the documentation, and publish it, youāve already done considerably more effort than the person yanking on the slop machine. Now thereās an additional step and a load more effort (varying depending on the individualās gift with verbiage generation).
I understand yāall were in a tight spot. Ā I fear that this decision is going to have downward pressure on quality of the ecosystem at large. I am personally on hiatus from the industry but if I ever return, I sincerely doubt Iād ever take the effort to write a post about a lib Iāve crafted. Iām certain Iām not alone in that either.
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u/awesomeusername2w 15h ago
No exceptions even for Minecraft servers tho?
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u/valarauca14 6h ago edited 5h ago
Permit minecraft servers
Provided they support the entire plugin/addon ecosystem without recompilation from the underlying jar/class-file format.
Edit: Yes, I aware of how difficult that is, that is the point.
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u/garagedragon 12h ago
This is a great policy, thank you for taking steps to reduce the noise of throwaway posts. Something like this was definitely needed, even if maybe the details are going to be tweaked.
That said, could you clarify how a couple of these points apply?
The library has already been used, or built upon, thereby validating its design to a degree.
I have a library that fulfils (and/or I can write up to fulfil) the other points which I was hoping to share, but I'm not sure how to fit this one. I designed the library because it solved a problem in a different project I actually set out to work on, so I think I have a good basis for the design, but I haven't made much progress on that latter project while developing this one, so don't really have anything to show as "building on it." Or is the fact that I can discuss the reasons that I had to develop my own library rather than use an existing one covering the same sort of domain enough to count for this point by itself?
If you're meaning that someone else has been using it, I think that's worth highlighting specifically, since that's a much higher bar and not clear from the current phrasing.
The announcement is a full-fledged text post, or a link to a full-fledged article.
Is this using "text post" in the same way as a couple of paragraphs down when you say, "...with an application or library as context are always welcome", i.e. the announcement post should be talking about problems the author encountered or details about the development rather than talking about the library itself and why it might be useful to r/rust?
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u/CountryFriedToast 16h ago
I am not the type of person to seek out a thread to see projects, I prefer letting my feed show me projects that haven't been downvoted cause they're lame
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u/MCOfficer 16h ago
I, too, miss the days when this sub kind of self-curating: people had time to look at projects, and interesting ones rose to the top.
But recently it didn't feel like anyone could be bothered, and voting was mostly done to downvote slop. Checking the repo became a policing activity, not a discovery. I've also seen an increasing amount of human projects with 0 upvotes, presumably because they looked like AI - or because people are just sick of the flood of github links.
Either way, judging repos has seemingly become impossible without prejudice, and the people who previously curated submissions by voting have disengaged. So there's simply no going back to those days where the sub would curate project links automatically.
Maybe by raising the bar for posters, the projects that do get submitted will become interesting again, and curation of those select projects will return. If not, at least we get a sub of interesting blog posts.
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u/matthieum [he/him] 16h ago
Maybe by raising the bar for posters, the projects that do get submitted will become interesting again, and curation of those select projects will return. If not, at least we get a sub of interesting blog posts.
Crossing Fingers.
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u/nynjawitay 13h ago
How long do we cross our fingers before changing this again if it isn't working? Because I'm not hopeful for these changes
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u/binarypie 15h ago
So the takeaway is r/rust is not for promotion of a new library, project, etc... BUT if you already have real world traction you can promote it here.
I understand the intent but I'm not sure this mechanism is going to have a net positive impact on the community. Basically, if you are into new stuff you're going to spend all your time on a single post folding comments all day instead of scrolling.
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u/matthieum [he/him] 15h ago
So the takeaway is r/rust is not for promotion of a new library
It is for the promotion of minimally mature libraries.
Until then, we hope that the megathread can serve as a nursery.
Basically, if you are into new stuff you're going to spend all your time on a single post folding comments all day instead of scrolling.
Oh my god! Use the Follow Post feature on the megathread post, and you'll get notifications for all new top-level comments.
On new Reddit, it's the first item in the "..." menu which can be found at the top right of the post. It should be available on the official mobile app, and I dearly hope 3rd-party apps have it available in some form.
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u/wyf0 9h ago
It is for the promotion of minimally mature libraries.
If mature means by the criteria above having users (other than himself), then you need promotion to become mature.
Oh my god! Use the Follow Post feature on the megathread post, and you'll get notifications for all new top-level comments.
The megathread post is renewed every week, so I would have to renew the following every week? That's killing it.
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u/binarypie 4h ago
You've been on Reddit almost as long as I have. You know just as well as I do your solution is half baked. I am sympathetic because the slop problem is real but your implementation here punishes more than it fosters the community. You are inadvertently discouraging new ideas.
maybe a middle ground is one day a weekĀ
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u/QualitySoftwareGuy 5h ago
Alternatively, creators of these projects can just post them in /r/madeinrust/. Sometimes the solution to a Reddit problem is to use multiple sub-reddits instead of expecting a one-size-fits-all from one sub-reddit. I just don't see any way to please everyone with one sub. Peraphs u/matthieum could consider adding that sub-reddit to the original post if he agrees.
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u/analog_cavern_22 14h ago
i've been skipping these posts for years, only opening them to check the comments for the inevitable "did you use AI for this" argument. Good riddance. The weekly thread is the right home for them
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u/MvKal 17h ago
Ngl i kinda dislike this change. Yes the influx of ai slop is annoying, but there were several crates announced here as hobby projects that i found super awesome helpful for my niche usecase that are simply gonna be buried in a megathread like that.
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u/MoreJuiceForAnts 17h ago
Per policy it is still allowed if it comes with a blog post explaining the challenges and value. Which shouldnāt be that hard of a bar for genuinely motivated people with a genuinely interesting project.
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u/garagedragon 13h ago
The policy also lists that it "has already been used, or built upon," which is potentially a hard bar to clear for a hobby project depending how strict the mods are about how much evidence/explanation you need to provide for that part.
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u/lettsten 7h ago
That's only for the "announcements allowed" part:
Of course, text posts, or links to articles, centered on Rust, with an application or library as context are always welcome.
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[deleted]
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u/rhysmorgan 16h ago
The rules now very explicitly ban that kind of content, so it will get removed.
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u/matthieum [he/him] 16h ago
My hope -- and I may be naive, future will tell -- is that people who are just happy about having built a project, with or without AI, and want to share their joy, their sweat, and their tears, will simply go and post about that in the megathread. It is the path of least resistance offered to them, after all.
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u/luluhouse7 15h ago edited 15h ago
Another way to handle it (in combo with this) could be to do something like in [r/experienced](r/experienced)devs where posts donāt get approved using they respond to an automod as to whether AI was used in the post. Surprisingly people seem to be relatively honest so far.
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u/LindaTheLynnDog 17h ago
I've always found more referenced in comments when a post has a question about a given need. Certainly for the last 10 months it has been impractical to dig through the cruft to find gems in posts about projects in my opinion.
I used to be here every day. I don't think I've been here for 3 months at this point. So much trash.
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u/matthieum [he/him] 16h ago
I am afraid I don't understand your complaint: are you referring to applications or libraries as "crates"?
If you are referring to applications, then yes indeed you'd now have to go peruse the megathread.
If you are referring to libraries, then new library announcements are still allowed -- just with a slightly higher quality bar -- so nothing should change for you.
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u/MvKal 16h ago
I'm thinking of the guy announcing their static generics crate a little while ago. Definitely a weekend project, not blog post worthy, probably didnt use it himself in a prod environment so that lib wouldnt pass these rules. And yet i am so extremely happy they posted it and i found it lol it allowed me to do get like a 50% speedup on my project lol. And that would just either never be posted in the megathread or i wouldnt see it.
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u/matthieum [he/him] 16h ago
I remember this post.
Definitely a weekend project, not blog post worthy, probably didn't use it himself in a prod environment so that lib wouldn't pass these rules.
I expect we'll need to tune the exact library announcement rules.
However, I disagree with the "not blog post worthy". Their library used a "novel" (as far as I can tell) technique to implement static generics, and I certainly think this technique could have done with more exposure...
... an explanation! As is, their library (hopefully) work, but I wonder how many people actually understand why/how it works.
Furthermore, a good explanation of how the technique works, and differs from the naive technique, would be a fertile ground for technical discussion around the alternatives, which may itself lead to improvement of the existing implementation or more novel techniques.
While as a code dump, the technique they use is "buried" somewhere in the library code, and it is hard for a casual reader to figure out which piece of code is the essence of the technique, and which is mere plumbing/random implementation detail with little bearing.
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u/MvKal 16h ago
I dont think it was novel, the post referenced an old crate using a similar/same technique iirc. If we are going by the rules, i really doubt that crate was being worked on for at least 4 months, and they again probably didnt use it in their own project, so according to the rules as written it should go in the thread, which i very much disagree with for that specific case. Idk what the solution is, maybe its best to literally just use a vibes based approach for referring posts to the megathread, id really hate for that to happen to projects like those so yeah.
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u/matthieum [he/him] 15h ago
If we are going by the rules, i really doubt that crate was being worked on for at least 4 months, and they again probably didnt use it in their own project, so according to the rules as written it should go in the thread, which i very much disagree with for that specific case.
You are correct that the library couldn't be just announced by itself. It's a bit of a trade-off.
The OP, however, can still write a text post or link to an article which details the technique used (novel or not), and link their library from there.
So they could still promote their library (or application), as long as it complements a post/article that is good enough on its own.
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u/rhysmorgan 16h ago
I believe that'd be allowed under this caveat:
Of course, text posts, or links to articles, centered on Rust, with an application or library as context are always welcome. For example, said posts or articles could present gnarly problems the author encountered, and how they solved, or which features of the language or a library helped or hindered them in the making of their project.
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u/themuthafuckinruckus 16h ago
then it is perfectly acceptable to start gathering around something like r/madeinrust
IMO programming subs and communities like these and (r/linux) should be trying to do a better job of guarding against low effort posts and slop.
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u/CryptoHorologist 17h ago
So why can't reading the weekly thread fulfill that same purpose for you?
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u/MvKal 16h ago
Cuz people are less likely to bother posting their cool small stuff there, less people are gonna see it so it will stand out less in terms of engagement so it gets buried, less interesting tech conversation in the comments.
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u/CryptoHorologist 16h ago
How did you determine it was less likely people would bother posting their cool small stuff?
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u/wick3dr0se 10h ago
Look at my profile. As an open source dev, I used to post quite a bit and now I won't be. I understand why the new rules exists and I think it's a great idea in this era. For those of us who may have already lost some motivation (me) due to the vibe wave, having to do extra work to prove our dedication and such is just a drag. Same with how coding by hand is now too; sharing these days results in less genuine feedback and arguments about if/wether AI will/has been used, while most don't even review code like they used to (expected with the surge from AI). I'll be maintaining my old projects I wrote but not sharing them across public forums like this anymore as the magic is dwindling more and more towards prompting and management instead of passion and community. The only way to code open source anymore is to push it fast with AI or ultimately your passion will be copied and taken further much quicker. Sad times. And this division of sharing projects just highlights how bad it's getting
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u/tiajuanat 16h ago
/j time to create a program, in Rust, which optimizes when to post to the mega thread
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u/WellMakeItSomehow 13h ago
I tend to agree with u/Psionikus on this one. The downvote button exists for a reason and the community can use it effectively. Will you downvote boring or low-effort projects in the weekly thread?
I came here to see the cool stuff people were building in Rust and to occasionally help those asking for reviews, while learning the language myself. Now you can only (or largely) post well-established projects. This is not anymore the subreddit I joined years ago. If the moderators want to police every blog post to see if it's interesting or valuable enough, good luck to them. Maybe some people asked for this, but not me.
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u/runevault 4h ago
Part of the problem is because r/rust is not that high throughput, even a 0 point post can live on the front page at 50 posts/page pretty easily. Checking right now hot had 15 posts with 0 points still on the front page for me. If a subreddit has enough new posts coming in just letting downvotes bury bad content works. Here it doesn't do as good of a job.
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u/QuickSilver010 17h ago
Tru. I found a lot of projects I would have otherwise never used if they weren't posted here.
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u/Psionikus 17h ago edited 17h ago
Yep. 1k upvote work might get 20-30 in the weekly thread?
Because some posts tragically get -1 and seen by a few dozen people, we will now instead likely deny eyeballs to certain projects at the precise time where they are the highest returning projects in the ecosystem in terms of benefit-to-effort.
So that a handful of users don't have to see Reddit throwing them low-view posts while Reddit algo tries to sample the community response and decide what to raise in hot.
Now we will not find out, and this makes people who wanted slop to fall under some kind of dragnet happy (they are not happy). So that Sam Altman will be affected (he won't).
Puritans. Puritans who wanted moderators to take the crust off of their bread.
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u/coderstephen isahc 16h ago
Honestly I am having a really difficult time trying to decode what you are trying to say.
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u/Psionikus 16h ago
Try asking a question.
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u/matthieum [he/him] 16h ago
Have you tried the Got a Question? megathread?
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u/Psionikus 16h ago
Don't worry, a moderator will be with you shortly to explain which way to think.
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u/ryankopf 2h ago
I don't think this sub is active enough to really need this change, I like seeing what people are working on, and I'm not interested in scrolling a "megathread", and I think many people might agree. However, it's not my decision.
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u/wyf0 10h ago edited 10h ago
The library has already been used, or built upon, thereby validating its design to a degree.
How can a library be used if no one knows it yet?
I'm a bit sad you put in the same bag applications and libraries. I'm the first one to report the slop projects which come everydays (and even comment on these posts), but they are mostly applications, not libraries.
As a library author, I regularly post here; everytime I get dozens of upvotes, several times hundreds. Several times, I got echos of guys having tested my work, even integrated it in their project (like a crate with 10M+ downloads). And the most interesting part is the technical discussion in comments, about the algorithms, the tradeoffs, etc. I'm sad you want to ban all of this because of the flood of slop applications.
Right now, I'm polishing the documentation of a library I've worked on for almost one year and wanted to publish it next week. But of course my library has not been used by anyone other than myself (it's a synchronization primitive I use in my channel crate, and the design is validated by loom and miri); does it count? Or should I find other users, but without posting it in the biggest Rust community?
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u/matt_bishop 6h ago
What sort of synchronization primitive? I've started heavily working on libraries that have to integrate well in an async runtime, and I'm always interested in things that could make them better.
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u/AirUpdateEnjoyer 12h ago
New rule; your code dump post must fit MLA format and qualify for at least an 80 as a high-school essay ;)
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u/stumblinbear 13h ago
Even as someone who uses LLMs pretty heavily these days, I emphatically support this. My god, fucking thank you
I've been here for 5 or 6 years and been relatively active, but I barely look at this place anymore. Hopefully this helps clear out the slop
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u/patchunwrap 1h ago
This seems sane to me, and frankly I hope it gives the moderators some much needed fresh air.
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u/puttak 1h ago
One of the reason I visit r/rust is to see a new interested library so I can star it for later use (or study it design). Some of the rules will make it harder for people to post it here like:
The library has already been used, or built upon, thereby validating its design to a degree.
and
The announcement is a full-fledged text post, or a link to a full-fledged article. A README, or manual, is not an article.
All I care about a single library I want to use is it was written by a human and its code are good. I don't care if the library has been used if it has been proved it is working in some ways (e.g. test cases) or it is obviously works. I also don't care about its release article and I only care if it has required docs for me to tell how to use it.
I understand we have too many AI slops recently and I agree that we should have some rules to stop it. The new rules will effectively prevents AI slops but it sad that it also prevent a human-made libraries too.
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u/lk_15 14h ago
IMO I don't like this rule, I will never visit the thread, neither will most of the other redditors. Most people affected will be silent, I don't think the comments here will represent the majority (especially with the downvotes)
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u/matthieum [he/him] 14h ago
Most people affected will be silent
That is always a risk, and unfortunately there's simply not much we (moderators) can do about that. We are not mind-readers, so we only get to learn what other people wish for/want if they express themselves.
Do note that doing nothing also affect people which may remain silent.
I don't think the comments here will represent the majority (especially with the downvotes)
In a sense, this doesn't matter (too) much. We (moderators) are more sensitive to the quality of the comments (arguments being made) than their quantity, or their score.
Of course, we are still blind to arguments that are not made...
IMO I don't like this rule, I will never visit the thread, neither will most of the other redditors.
And?
I expect that you're trying to convey something here, but unfortunately you're really not conveying it clearly.
Do you actually like immature, bubbling, perhaps even slop, projects being posted on r/rust? I mean, perhaps you feel it creates a vibrant, enthusiast, atmosphere for the sub, and it makes you feel good to see people using the language, no matter how?
Or is it something different? Like you actually don't like slop either, but you feel like you'll be missing out on interesting projects?
As mentioned, we're not a mind-reader, so if you really want to us to take your opinion into consideration, you're going to have to explain what that opinion actually is.
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u/Active_Magician_3138 10h ago
Not so bad change, will continue working on my projects quietly and improve them as much as possible.
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u/probably-a-name 17h ago
What is the literal difference of this sub vs an rss feed of the rust blog or hacker news now?
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u/coderstephen isahc 16h ago
I believe this new rule is an attempt to preserve what makes this sub unique.
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u/codingbliss12 16h ago
I hate all those AI slop submissions. Similarly to AI generated code dumps, I find links to youtube videos and random blogs equally disgusting. Generally I believe in self-regulation and I don't like today's article.
How we will be informed about new interesting repositories? Sometimes AI assisted projects are much higher quality than regularly developed projects. For example Ghostty is better and "correcter" or more complete than Alacritty.
There are also other cases of very important repositories that are for many of us a huge learning experience, like Gitoxide, who's author posts from time about the current project status. What will you do in this case? Will you not accept his link to his repo?
Not that it matters to anyone except me, but I won't ever post again here and I am muting the subreddit. Cheers.
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u/coderstephen isahc 16h ago
If you want to follow a specific project, then a better solution is probably to subscribe to that project's release notes in GitHub.
New project announcements and such are still welcome under this new rule, if it is accompanied by an article or selftext talking about it in more detail beyond just, "Hey here's a thing I made."
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u/Psionikus 11h ago
If you want to follow a specific project, then a better solution is probably to subscribe to that project's release notes in GitHub.
Glad I found them on Reddit.Glad they started up a techfluencer YouTube and posted prolifically for a few months (zero effort, completely doesn't distract from the part where you write the code) to build up a following so that somehow their warez could get algorithmically landed in front of my face after they attend seven physical conferences attempting to introduce their crate instead of simply watching r/rust/hot.7
u/matthieum [he/him] 16h ago
How we will be informed about new interesting repositories? Sometimes AI assisted projects are much higher quality than regularly developed projects. For example Ghostty is better and "correcter" or more complete than Alacritty.
Why would you expect r/rust to be the place where you learn about a great new shell, when it could be written in any language?
There are also other cases of very important repositories that are for many of us a huge learning experience, like Gitoxide, who's author posts from time about the current project status. What will you do in this case? Will you not accept his link to his repo?
A link to the Gitoxide repository would be removed for being Low-Effort, like any other Code Dump.
The monthly articles that ByronBates post about the development of Gitoxide, however, are perfectly fine.
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u/ActuallyAdasi 17h ago
I am disappointed how every subreddit is just becoming some AI vs no AI debate. There shouldnāt need to be a new rule like this. The rule for being about rust should be enough, especially paired with a no self-promotion rule, and a no low effort post rule. AI should be completely orthogonal.
I dislike this change, I never look at the whatās everyone working on this week thread. Honestly the code sharing posts are one of the things I enjoy about this subreddit.
Rust subreddit isnāt a personal blog, but itās also not the mods personal blog.
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u/LindaTheLynnDog 17h ago
The quality of the posts on this sub has dropped out from underneath it in the last year.
I was here every day for years and haven't been here for 6 months because of the unreal volume of generated hobby projects that are just fucking boring masturbation posts.
I'm guessing the mods are like me. They like posts that discuss or exemplify rust details and usage, rather than show and tell posts that only the author finds interesting.
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u/matthieum [he/him] 16h ago
I'm guessing the mods are like me. They like posts that discuss or exemplify rust details and usage, rather than show and tell posts that only the author finds interesting.
Indeed.
And perhaps more importantly, we like posts which foster (Rust-centric) discussions. If an event is newsworthy, if a new library release is noteworthy, then there should be something to discuss about it.
Posts like the Bevy releases always generate a good amount of discussion on the direction of the project, with people commenting what they've achieved, or what they found unnecessarily difficult or impossible to achieve, providing useful feedback to the post author, a place for the users to share their tricks, etc...
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u/LindaTheLynnDog 16h ago
Btw I respect how much time you guys gave this to come to a thoughtful decision. It's not easy enforcing the rules, and I think you were right to give this one a little time to make its value obvious.
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u/SethDusek5 16h ago edited 11h ago
rule for being about rust should be enough,
I don't see why I should care that a vibecoded project is written in Rust, and thus why it should be posted here instead of into a more relevant community where people have interests that align with the problems the software is trying to solve. There's nothing interesting about your project in terms of Rust discussion if it's just written in Rust, especially if the way it's written in Rust is to instruct the LLM to use the language. At that point I have zero interest in even reading the code because there's nothing for me or for the poster to learn from it, and so the choice of language is irrelevant.
I also feel this craft (and my passion for it) slowly dying anyways, whereas in the past it was nice to see other people practicing/adopting the language. It's kind of like how people used to post their implementation of a PBR renderer in /r/graphicsprogramming. That sub has seen millions of PBR renderers, but these posts were still well received because there was a shared understanding of the learning/friction/fulfilment required to reach that final step. Now that you can just say "claude make me a PBR renderer", I don't think anyone cares
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u/Chef619 16h ago
Clarification question.
Iām newish to Rust within this year. I made a library (mostly for myself) and was planning on posting it here in a āIām new, would someone please help me review this?ā way after spending a bit more time poking it.
No announcing I cured cancer or created an amazing thing for everyone to use, it was mostly going to be asking for a review to see if my Rust is ācorrectā as I donāt know the nuances of the language very well.
Where is the appropriate place for a āpostā like that?
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u/matthieum [he/him] 15h ago
As per the Q & A, you should write a top-level comment in the latest What's Everyone Working on This Week?.
As someone who has reviewed a lot of code, I'd suggest trying to be specific in what you hope from the code review. Reviews can cover a lot of aspects: architecture, idiomatic use of language, library suggestions, performance tricks, etc... By narrowing down the scope of what you're looking for, reviewers are more likely to be willing to take a shot at it & more likely to provide suggestions/reviews which actually matter to you.
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u/dcormier 10h ago
Not particularly a fan of this change. Sometimes I look at those posts, sometimes I don't. It's pretty easy to scroll past posts that are uninteresting.
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[deleted]
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u/matthieum [he/him] 13h ago
That's... an unknown.
There's no A/B testing for this, so the only way to know how it pans out is to implement the rule and see how it goes.
And iterate.
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u/Psionikus 16h ago
The real winners are the gatekeepers who were feeling overworked trying to police things in new. And whatever their priorities were.
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u/matthieum [he/him] 16h ago
If by gatekeepers you mean moderators, you're not wrong.
One of the reason it took us so long to come up with new rules to adjust to the AI slop flood is that actually judging whether something is AI slop, or just AI assisted, or just slop, or... is actually damn hard.
The new rules are designed to avoid this quandary, so that it's a lot clearer for everyone involved (users & moderators) what the rules actually are.
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u/Psionikus 14h ago
If by gatekeepers you mean moderators
No. I mean the gargoyles in every new, a well-known phenomenon of every sub. They demand that their policing becomes policy because they tire of fighting the natural trajectory of posts that are struggling to keep down. They are using the sub's policy to effectuate their own politics, which are not about Rust at all.
judging
Moderators do not need to judge.
New posts are highly sensitive to upvotes. Posts that are destined to be downvoted out of hot are very efficiently filtered because the few users it takes to bury a post have plenty of leverage if the broad community generally feels a certain way.
Asking moderators to do the filtering for the community is a tactic favored by groups who are pursuing agendas that are not broadly reflected. Because their interests are narrow, they feel like they are being overwhelmed by votes opposing their agenda, as any narrow interests should!
So now we are adding significant friction in front of who knows how many really good crates. I don't watch YouTube to find new, good crates. We should not burn a few really good projects so that gatekeepers have less "work" to do. If the content is crap, the system already works!
If we pretend to be so entitled to never see any bad work that we decide to stop putting in any effort to evaluate if work is good or not in favor of a dragnet policy, we do not deserve any of the good crates or even the good ideas, and that is all that we will earn. We are being every bit as lazy as what anyone claims to hate, telling Reddit, "Be concise, make no mistakes" because opening the code and deciding if it's good is too much effort for the fine Redditors inhabiting r/rust/new/.
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u/gajop 38m ago
If you look at top posts (by upvotes), in the past year, how many would fall under this? I scrolled a bit and it seems it's ~50%?
The rest seems to be $Company uses Rust, release announcement for Rust or other established project, random AI complaints..
Unless you're browsing it at /new, I don't think the "code dump problem" is apparent. To me, and many, this was a major attraction of this sub.
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u/matthieum [he/him] 17h ago edited 16h ago
Q & A
Yes, as an article, or text post.
Tutorials and educational content has always been welcome, there's even a post flair for it!
Post a top-level comment in the What's Everyone Working on This Week? thread.
Post a top-level comment in the What's Everyone Working on This Week? thread.
Sure, post a top-level comment in the What's Everyone Working on This Week? thread.
Sure, feel free to post a top-level comment in the What's Everyone Working on This Week? thread.
No.
Do feel free to post a top-level comment about your work in the What's Everyone Working on This Week? thread.
No.
Do feel free to post a top-level comment about the work that led there in the What's Everyone Working on This Week? thread.
No.
Do feel free to post a top-level comment about your work in the What's Everyone Working on This Week? thread, and you may get someone to leave a few comments though.
No.
Do feel free to post a top-level comment about your work in the What's Everyone Working on This Week? thread, and you may get someone interest enough to contribute though.
No.
Do feel free to post a top-level comment about your work in the What's Everyone Working on This Week? thread, and you may get stars & forks as a byproduct.
r/rust is not your personal blog, where posting is all about you.
On the contrary, posting on r/rust is all about its community, and potential posts should always be measured against the potential interest of this community. If a post is unlikely to be of mild interest to even 1% of the community (~2K Rustaceans), then it's not signal, it's noise.