Thanks for the writeup. Moderation–particularly around a hot-button issue as contentious as this–is not easy, so kudos for keeping a level head and thank you for all the work you and the team have put into keeping the site clean and for updating us on the new policy.
My gut reaction is that I’m worried about seeing more and more low-effort and generative AI-centric content flooding the zone. One of the things I like about lobsters over sites like Hacker News is that I can get some peace from the incredibly boring onslaught of people doing things with LLMs. I don’t find this interesting, personally, and the vibecoding tag did a reasonably good job at keeping the feed human-only. We’ll see over time how well the new system works overall, I suppose.
My gut reaction is that I’m worried about seeing more and more low-effort and generative AI-centric content flooding the zone.
Yes, and I was similarly knee-jerk tempted to read this change as a loud contingent’s success in painting themselves as victims, but instead: (1) this is a compromise to keep enough people happy enough, as many moderation decisions are, and (2) on the flip side this may indicate to more people, who may have previously been filtering the vibecoding tag, that they should use the “spam” flag for submissions they view as “slop”. Time will certainly tell if this change steers this site closer or further from being just another tech link aggregator.
Thanks for the writeup. Moderation–particularly around a hot-button issue as contentious as this–is not easy, so kudos for keeping a level head and thank you for all the work you and the team have put into keeping the site clean and for updating us on the new policy.
My gut reaction is that I’m worried about seeing more and more low-effort and generative AI-centric content flooding the zone. One of the things I like about lobsters over sites like Hacker News is that I can get some peace from the incredibly boring onslaught of people doing things with LLMs. I don’t find this interesting, personally, and the vibecoding tag did a reasonably good job at keeping the feed human-only. We’ll see over time how well the new system works overall, I suppose.
score 5 · canonical
Yes, and I was similarly knee-jerk tempted to read this change as a loud contingent’s success in painting themselves as victims, but instead: (1) this is a compromise to keep enough people happy enough, as many moderation decisions are, and (2) on the flip side this may indicate to more people, who may have previously been filtering the vibecoding tag, that they should use the “spam” flag for submissions they view as “slop”. Time will certainly tell if this change steers this site closer or further from being just another tech link aggregator.
score 2 · canonical