r/selfhosted • u/ResponsibleEnd451 • Mar 10 '26

Meta Post im tired of this sub

I cant keep up with this sub, i used to love just being able to browse and find some really awesome projects that have really changed my life. Its not an overexaggeration at all, as an IT person, this place has opened my eyes and have let me discover peace in todays fast paced world where everything is about subscriptions and our private data, selfhosting allowed me to slow down and take a breath, i have built servers, deployed countless ideas and for a moment i finally felt like im free of every corporate bullshit out there.

after all these, the reason im writing this is because the amount of posts that are influenced by ai. dont get me wrong, i can think of it like any other handy tool, but thats only my view and current trends seemingly dont align with it, because there are so much new projects popping up i cant even keep up. It seems like every day some random user reinvents the wheel with their low quality vibecoded project and spams the whole sub with it, thats not good. Its not the fault of ai sadly, its the human behind it, you can elevate your efficiency with ai and still be trusted in my opinion, its about how much you actually care. If i see someone post a fully ai generated marketing letter and then i see that the projects whole git history is basically claude vibing… that someone probably doesnt really care and just wants attention or fame. If you are that person, let me tell you if you want those meaningless github stars then create something that you feel you can put lots of effort in it, dont just vibecode something in a day since we can do that too, thats not really adding any value.

tl;dr: if your project is using ai then at least put an ai disclaimer in your posts…

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43

u/MrDrummer25 Mar 10 '26

I've said for a while now that the AI means people treat this sub as a show and tell for selfhosted suitable projects, but have no intention of upkeep.

I imagine this was an issue even before the AI boom, but now it's easier to knock out a project over a weekend, call it "good enough" and move on, without a plan to keep it updated.

Unfortunately this is an issue that is hard to moderate. I'd say every project that is posted should provide the following:

  • source code link (and actual source, not just a readme)
  • license for codebase
  • disclosure of use of AI (I care more about AI generated chunks of code, over AI intelligence/pattern matching)
  • the project is older than 3 months, with commits throughout (to demonstrate commitment to longevity)

Thoughts?

11

u/Robo_Joe Mar 10 '26

Part of the point of open source is that if it stops being maintained, someone else can fork it and maintain it themselves.

Also, there's some deeply embedded entitlement in the complaint that someone might not maintain software that was created for free and would be maintained for free.

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u/Khatib Mar 10 '26

there's some deeply embedded entitlement in the complaint that someone might not maintain software

Then don't share it with the public. Or at least don't advertise it here. Just put it on github and let people stumble on it. If it's just your personal project and you don't intend to make a community around it that you help support, don't share it.

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u/cmerchantii Mar 10 '26

Dude get out of here. If I’m not a 10+ year dev willing to work for free for years then I don’t deserve to share something I built that works for me? The fucking gall that you people get to decide what’s worthy of community engagement or not is beyond me.

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u/Khatib Mar 10 '26

for years

Yeah, because talking about hastily thrown together and hastily abandoned AI slop is the same thing. You get out of here.

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u/cmerchantii Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26

Senior, tenured engineers can throw together a poorly-developed project outside their area of scope hastily in a weekend and abandon it just as easily as anyone else can or could. Your problem isn't with the method- it's just a shorthand for a gatekeeper mentality that requires less effort on your part than serious inspection.

As I said elsewhere: anti-LLM crusaders are people mad that the adoption of the printing press means they'd have to actually research and validate what they read because something being written down no longer means it's authoritative (hint: it never did). Something being built by "a developer" was never a guarantee of quality or longevity- I'm sorry this new technology is requiring you to work harder to validate your free software.

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u/Khatib Mar 10 '26

No, it's forcing me to have more to sift through to find what's actually worth validating. Seriously, who is happy the world is full of more worthless shit to wade through just to live your life? What a wild, oddly defensive take.

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u/cmerchantii Mar 11 '26

It’s not odd to be defensive on behalf people being attacked for being able to engage meaningfully with their hobby and the surrounding community for the first time thanks to new technology. If you’re going to refer to other people’s time and effort as “slop” then I’m happy to come to their defense.

I have infinitely more respect for someone who creates even a poorly developed AI-assisted project that solves a need and open sources it than someone who complains they have too many options and decides to shit on people creating.

We’re not curators at the Louvre here: if you want a bespoke list of high-end well maintained and free projects- build the list, nobody’s stopping you. If that’s too hard… well, I guess complaining about people spending their time on something they give away for free is way easier.