r/Windows11 • u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Head Jannie • 19h ago
Mod Announcement Looking for feedback regarding handling of self-promotion on this subreddit
Howdy all. I’m looking for some feedback from you all regarding how we should handle self-promotion of software, and how we grant permission to allow some to share what they have been working on.
We used to be fairly generous and laid back with granting permission, granting most requests after a simple modmail and a quick review of the product. However, due to the AI boom we started receiving a flood of requests for permission to share what ultimately ended up being low-quality hastily written software, which of course understandably led to many complaints. We stopped accepting new requests for a while so that we could come up with a plan to handle future requests in a fair manner.
Our team has come up with the following requirements, some of which were already part of our old guidelines:
- Applications must be either open source or they must be available in the Microsoft Windows app store. This is mainly for safety reasons. We're not equipped to toughly test software for safety and security, these options allow third parties to check.
- The application must have a permanent free tier. Freemium products are allowed, however limited time trials are not.
- The application must have been publicly available for at least 30 days. We would like to see that it is regularly being updated, maintained, fixed and improved upon.
- The application must provide value to the community.
- The developer must provide proof that their Reddit account is connected to the project.
- Their Reddit account must also be well established with a posting history that is not just related to the promotion of their software.
- Discourse of AI usage - Use of AI to generate code, artwork, descriptions, and so on is permitted, however the descriptions and posts need to disclose at least the use of that, preferably with also disclosing what AI tools were used and what they had generated.
Our goal is to keep things fair and allow hard working developers to show off various Windows programs they have worked on, while not allowing the subreddit to be overrun with spam and low-quality slop.
What are your thoughts? Too restrictive? Not restrictive enough? Thank you for your time!
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u/Fascinating_Destiny 16h ago
How would someone share a cool foss software they liked to share? I want to share some github projects that aren't made by myself but deserves promotion
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u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Head Jannie 11h ago
That is fine. If you do make a post about them, make it clear you are not affiliated with it, but you don't need to do that for regular comments.
What really grinds my gears is when people do the "wow look at this cool software I found that I totally did not write!", and spoiler alert, they wrote it.
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u/Weary-Independent651 11h ago
Seems fair to me The 30 day + free tier rules should cut down the spam without hurting genuine devs 👍
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u/LeGoodBeef Release Channel 15h ago
Personally? I wouldn't want *any* kind of self-promotion with the exception of Microsoft products or Microsoft-related software like PowerToys.
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u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Head Jannie 11h ago
That is fair enough, and is something we were considering (and it is not off the table)
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u/bogglingsnog 11h ago
I'm confused here between these two:
- The developer must provide proof that their Reddit account is connected to the project.
- Their Reddit account must also be well established with a posting history that is not just related to the promotion of their software.
So they need to have an account that is made/associated especially for the project, but also not specifically for the project? Sounds impossible to me.
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u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Head Jannie 10h ago
Nope! Take /u/Bogdan_X for example (they already have permission to share).
You can see on their profile they are participating on Reddit, they post in different subs, different topics, and so on which have nothing to do with any software they wrote. This is not an account dedicated to promotion. The "proof" usually would be something like a link to their Reddit account on their Github page or something along that.
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u/bogglingsnog 10h ago
Ok, so the point is the accounts aren't allowed if they are created solely for promotion of their software. Got it! Seems reasonable.
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u/AshuraBaron Insider Dev Channel 10h ago
More like the account shows a direct connection to the project. Not that it's made for it, but that it's one of the developers reddit accounts. That's what I got from it at least.
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u/bogglingsnog 10h ago
hmm so like they need identity verification to prove they are an employee, but it needs to be their personal account used on other subreddits?
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u/AshuraBaron Insider Dev Channel 10h ago
I think all of these are solid. 30 day requirement makes sense in that you don't want "hey I made this morning" type of app promotions. I think you want to include some language there about it being up to mods. A simply utility app that was well coded might not see many updates if at all after 30 days. 30 days feels like a good medium between waiting multiple months to post and posting throw away apps.
The rule about permanent free tier is nice, but might be too restrictive. Maybe fully paid apps can only post on a certain day or something. I don't think you want Norton to make posts on here, but smaller companies though should probably be allowed to some degree. Pointing to quality software on the Windows app store might help surface that to more people instead of just inundated with paid ads.
Last thing to add would be making all self-promotion a flair so users have more control if they don't want to see it.
Looking forward to some great Windows software.
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u/radialmonster 16h ago
I don't think mods should judge if something is a quality program, or useful to the community.
The other points I'd agree with.
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u/fishwasherr 10h ago
personally I would love to find out about new apps but only if the post is clear, and is very clear about if it's paid or not immediately
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u/Octal450_V2 9h ago
Personally, I think it should be disallowed. This sub is called Windows 11 and I'd like to see posts about the OS... not tons of advertisements for 3rd party software.
That being said, I have discovered some useful apps here but maybe that would be more suited for something like "Windows Apps" sub... most of the stuff promoted here is just ads for stuff I don't really need, stuff with very niche purposes.
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u/cottonycloud 2h ago
Can we also do something to limit the frequency of posts? Sorry to the passionate, but I really do not need to see minor version releases of your app here.
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u/DrDavyStrange 1h ago
This sounds completely fine to me.
A blanket ban on AI-assistance coded apps would be utterly foolish as all programmes except a very few luddites use AI to code. This is a fact. Linus Torvalds has openly expressed this. 'No AI apps' would mean 'no apps', and that would not help anyone.
The human creativity, the quality of the idea and the dedication behind it are what matter, not how that creativity was instantiated. Support and celebrate good ideas and work, spurn rubbish ideas.
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u/17O8 Insider Release Preview Channel 16h ago
I want none of it. think like this; I have adblock, but they dont block reddit post.
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u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Head Jannie 11h ago
Totally understandable, someone else said basically the same, and this is not something we have entirely ruled out.
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u/Bogdan_X Wintoys Developer 12h ago edited 12h ago
I have two suggestions here based on what I've seen:
It would be great to have a message similar to the one mentioning risks for running debloater scripts, but for apps made with LLMs (AI). Users should be informed about the risks of security, stability and all the comes with relying blindly on AI, as a means to mimic and replace actual software engineering experience.
Limit the posts per app updates to prevent spam. I've seen too many posts for minor incremental updates that bring no value other than linking a changelog. I think an update announcement should have some effort put in it, something extra besides the actual changelog, like behind the scenes stories, insights, explanations, etc.
I do agree with most of the points from the post except this one:
The application must have been publicly available for at least 30 days. We would like to see that it is regularly being updated, maintained, fixed and improved upon.
One one hand it is a good thing to do, but on the other hand, if it's a Windows utility, this is one of the main ways of letting other people know your app exists, so who's gonna use it if you can't post here for 30 days? Maybe you need more users to test it but you can't talk here about it so you'd have to find other places to request help for testing or initial thoughts.
Just something to consider.
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u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Head Jannie 11h ago
It would be great to have a message similar to the one mentioning risks for running debloater scripts, but for apps made with LLMs (AI). Users should be informed about the risks of security, stability and all the comes with relying blindly on AI, as a means to mimic and replace actual software engineering experience.
Yep! My original thought was altering the automod message on self promotion posts to include something along those lines for AI content, but I had not written anything specifically down yet.
Limit the posts per app updates to prevent spam.
Indeed, that was something we were were also going to deal with too. We had it happen with more than one developer this year where they got a bit excessive with posting (and one person had something like 6 submissions in just this sub in a month).
I was working on a rough draft of some rules regarding that and had at least started with We do not have a set in stone limit to how often you can post, but please be respectful of the community and put long gaps between your submissions. People don't like to be spammed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/wiki/selfpromotion
One one hand it is a good thing to do, but on the other hand, if it's a Windows utility, this is one of the main ways of letting other people know your app exists, so who's gonna use it if you can't post here for 30 days? Maybe you need more users to test it but you can't talk here about it so you'd have to find other places to request help for testing or initial thoughts.
Just something to consider.
Indeed, thank you for that. And I appreciate your take being already flaired to share your apps. That "problem" was something I was thinking about too, my thought is that this is not the only subreddit, I see people sharing software they made on /r/windowsapps and such. I'm trying to avoid the problem of low grade slop being churned out, then quickly abandoned.
Again, nothing is set in stone and comments like yours are helping us to shape things. Thank you.
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u/GoodSelective 19h ago edited 19h ago
I don't think that it's important that an application be open source or that it have a permanent free tier. That kind of thinking is how you wind up with software that is user hostile. A reasonable business model generally doesn't involve giving away stuff for free. That's the model of shitty, free-to-play mobile games. Chasing whales. When you look at other platforms that have tons of really great, beloved indie apps...the standard is a 30 day trial. Not a permanent free tier.
We should be expecting software to cost money and to serve the actual user of it. Being forced to tweak the free tier of your application constantly because of monetization issues does not serve the user.
We should also expect software to be written by actual developers who were developing software prior to Opus 4.5's release. We don't need an endless avalanche of vibe slop.
Unrelated: did you folks ever ban WindowsLatest for low effort outrage bait? That kind of stuff makes up the bulk of the issues as of late.
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u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Head Jannie 17h ago
Thank you.
Most of the software allowed to be promoted here in the past has been entirely 100% free, our goal with that is to try and discourage big name paid software from coming by while encouraging Joe in his basement making a cool widget tool. If Joe wanted to have a paid option to remove ads or add syncing, that would be fine. Very few posting things here were profit driven. I'll take what you wrote under consideration, as the avalanche of vibe slop did overwhelm us.
We are dealing with WL and the other blogs separately with this. I've chatted with Mayank from WL and things have improved with them.
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u/GoodSelective 17h ago edited 13h ago
I was thinking more of the macOS indie app scene, where lots of extremely high quality apps exist because FOSS ideology/F2P game style business models do not, collectively, rule the day. You instead have a software scene that looks more like Windows 9X: software costs money, software serves users. I think you can allow for that without permitting giant companies to promote stuff.
WL has been hostile in response to me personally. I'd still like to see them banned outright.
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u/GumSL 16h ago
I fully agree. Talking to them won't resolve anything. WL is rotten at their roots. Best to just cut them out and ban them and their links from the sub.
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u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Head Jannie 11h ago
I believe we have resolved it. They were banned for a short while, and Mayank has been receptive of feedback from many including me, and the quality of submissions (and headlines) from them has improved.
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u/MayankWL Windows Latest 12h ago edited 12h ago
Can't respond to the user because they blocked me (I really don't know why). I do remember reaching out to them a long time ago for feedback, but they never responded to me, and I'm finding out only now that they've blocked me.
I'd personally never understand the hate towards a website. If you don't like it, you don't read it. This is how I see it. But half of this guy's posts on the sub have been about how he hates the site, and it's quite obvious that they don't want to talk.
I'm going to have the site's editor speak to him now, as I've been blocked. Again, we're looking for constructive feedback here. "I just hate them" does not work. If there's a specific headline they don't like, the feedback should be, "You could have gone ahead with a different headline, like this: '...'"
There was feedback that I got earlier this month around the overuse of "admits" in headlines, and we stopped using it.
It also looks like people have a misconception that headlines are written for Reddit. They're written for search engines, and we have to play by the rules of what works on the search engines. We can't have a special headline for Reddit due to tech limitations.
It's quite difficult to understand the problem when the responses are "rotten to the core" or that we've been "hostile" to them when I can't recall ever having a conversation with them.
It looks like most people don't seem to understand that we're limited by resources. It's just few of us doing independent reporting without sending people to affiliate sites to generate revenue. WL is the only independent site that's left now. MSPU, onMSFT, and others have simply disappeared.
Then, you've another problem where certain headlines that people on this sub would like, but on other subs, that would come across shilling for Microsoft.
If SelectiveGood is able to explain what needs to be done to change his prespective, I am open to implementing his ideas, and issue a public apology. I'd also love if they could be an advisor for the site. The community builds it. But hey, "they're hostile" to me does not help.
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u/phototransformations 16h ago
"A reasonable business model generally doesn't involve giving away stuff for free. That's the model of shitty, free-to-play mobile games."
This has not been my experience. I'm fine with paying for software, but I also have a lot of respect for the FOSS community that has brought us, along with many well-crafted Windows programs, Linux and its universe.
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u/BarneysBuzzWagon Insider Beta Channel 17h ago
I disagree with the free tier requirement. Any real business can't operate that way. The already suggested trial period requirement I support.
In light of the additional topic regarding website and other non-software promotion, tech blogs like the aforementioned WindowsLatest need to be reigned in or banned due to their low quality and tendency to be very misleading.
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u/MayankWL Windows Latest 12h ago
What has been misleading or low quality? Please DM me examples and help me improve the site. We literally test all Windows updates and products, and we have dozens of screenshots and videos. I don't understand how that could be considered low quality.
Seriously, if your opinion is based on reading a few headlines, assuming we're shit, and never bothering to read the rest of our stuff, then I don't think that's fair.
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u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Head Jannie 10h ago
Our focus for allowing people to self promote is not really in the interest of for-profit businesses, but rather individuals. There are tons of cool tools made by the community for the community, if someone wants to buy an ad on Reddit to promote whatever they are selling they are more than welcome too. The McAfee's and such of the world typically are focusing their marketing at a higher level than as a post on this subreddit. Not that they couldn't ask for permission, we just don't normally see that to start with.
I do appreciate your feedback, I like seeing various perspectives and different things to consider as we start to iron this out.
Windows Latest shouldn't be a problem any longer, they have cleaned up their act, so maybe you could give them another chance, they are listening to feedback and have improved their quality including the headlines they use.
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u/GumSL 18h ago
I think you should also extend it to tech blogs, 'cause... boy are there some clickbaity ones that love to post their own links here and mislead people.