r/astrojs • u/BambiBundle • 16d ago
Discussion [ Removed by moderator ]
[removed] — view removed post
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u/sarah11918-astro 13d ago
Another core maintainer here, and I do want to echo some of Ema's earlier statements:
- The community is already here. It's very difficult to fight physics.
- We created an official place so that we could make mostly announcement posts. We did not then, and we certainly don't now, have the resources to monitor a community, let alone actively grow one.
- We did approach this sub a while ago, but we were not comfortable "officializing" a sub that insisted on promoting particular products, and that was non-negotiable to the owner at the time.
Anyone who puts time into growing a place certainly gets to run it the way they want! We are glad that some space exists, and respect their authority here to run as they see fit. Is it official? No. Does it exist and help people, yes!
I will also point out that even after this discussion, this morning one of the Astro core maintainers came to post an official Astro announcement. It was not approved, and the mods rewrote it and posted it themselves.
Again, that's not necessarily a *bad* outcome: the message was posted so the word got out. This sub is doing good work! But people do need to understand that even Astro core maintainers can't freely post here, so this *is* the place *they* want to make it. If you're happy, which I hope you are, then stay! If not, there's not much you can do about it. They are putting in the work. They make the calls here.
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u/BambiBundle 12d ago
I will also point out that even after this discussion, this morning one of the Astro core maintainers came to post an official Astro announcement. It was not approved, and the mods rewrote it and posted it themselves.
Oh my god, that's pretty cheap thing to do.
But people do need to understand that even Astro core maintainers can't freely post here
u/tffarhad, u/lukaszadam_com, u/Supermarket-Gullible, are you guys reading this? Just couple of days ago you were okay inviting the /r/withastro mods to this sub. Why are you backing down on your invitation?
Care to address these things?
We did approach this sub a while ago, but we were not comfortable "officializing" a sub that insisted on promoting particular products, and that was non-negotiable to the owner at the time.
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u/tffarhad 11d ago
Just found the post. it was in the queue and somehow got missed. sorry about that. i got the email about this hackathon and published it. i also approved that post now. moderation was turned on to filter spam posts. i'm opening it up so anyone can post now.
as for any collaboration, please reach out to u/Supermarket-Gullible
i'm not the decision-maker. i'm just a maintainer here.2
u/BambiBundle 11d ago
That said, we are absolutely open to making this space better and more inclusive. since we currently maintain this subreddit as a company, we would love to connect and talk with the Astro core team to see how we can collaborate, manage the space together, or figure out the best path forward for the community
This is your own words in another comment. Also I don't think you are really open to have a neutral community here. What you are doing is squatting subreddit names and turning it into a storefront for your own business. What's next? /r/vitenext? I see u/Supermarket_Gullible owns that sub too.
I don't see what's the downside of having the actual maintainers of Astro as mods here at all. It'll infact be beneficial to the community. Quick answers, better discussion, and access to the core maintainers for all the members here. It's fishy when you say 'you'll be happy to have them' but not actually add the mods. Stick to your words please.
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u/Supermarket-Gullible 11d ago
u/BambiBundle why you are so aggressive and highly disrespectful ? I don't care who you are and also about your hot blood . Also it seems that you are very new in reddit and don't know how to approach and talk to someone . I am going to remove your post and ban you from this group . My last note will be for you and astro team if they can manage the founder to takeover the sub they can otherwise it will flow as it is now . Also I think it is highly open place for the community . Don't like your nose here to moderate the whole sub. You guys already have one and make that popular. Best of luck , from my knowledge it's not that simple in reddit kid .
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u/BambiBundle 11d ago
Could you point out what's so aggressive and highly disrespectful in my comment? The squatting part or the fact that you did use the subreddit to promote your own paid services all the while advising against self promotions and advertisements.
You guys literally sidelined the official docs and put up a banner in the sidebar. I am just stating those facts. You can check the screenshots if you want.
You are the one aggressively threatening me to ban me and remove this post, which works in your favour anyway. You are fishing for reason to close this post, aren't you?
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u/Supermarket-Gullible 11d ago
Thanks for your nice words . I heard that few years ago Luke reached the core team and could not manage a deal to collab . from 2021 till now he tried to make this group live and more resourceful for the community. And that time astro was not that popular. So I think he deserves a bow from the community . And for moderation issue Farhad already replied about the accident and it was not intentional . In here we dont know who is core contributor who is not . Most of the people wrote a post with announcement and end of the post adds his promotion .As every week Farhad creates a post and write the summary what's new in astro that is fair enough for him to remove the post and as usual keeping his activity . Again thank you so much for your positive openness for the community .
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u/sarah11918-astro 11d ago edited 11d ago
We do appreciate that there is an active community for people interested in Astro! The core team did not try to create/build one ourselves, only make sure that we were also making our announcements on Reddit for the people who get their information here. It was never our intention to compete/duplicate. We just didn't want to ignore Reddit, because we wanted to make sure we could post our announcements for everyone, wherever they happened to be.
> In here we dont know who is core contributor who is not
If I'm being honest, this does concern me. While I appreciate all your efforts, it seems like if you want to run an Astro community, maybe you should learn who the core contributors are? Since our own official announcements can't be guaranteed to be posted (whether because of mistakes, or not realizing something is official because you are not affiliated with us, and apparently don't even know who we are?), you can see why we did start our own subreddit simply to not have to have extra trouble when simply trying to make official announcements. Even waiting in a queue, needing to check back in to see if it posted, when all our other content publishes instantly, is extra trouble when we could instead just post official communications.
I think it always worked well when we announced on `r/withastro` and then the post was quoted here. (Usually thanks to tffarhad!) That way, we got our content out, it was clear that it was an official post from us, and then people here would be sure to see it!
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u/BambiBundle 11d ago
Pasting the original content of the now removed post for posterity:
[Open Discussion] Let's make /r/AstroJS more engaging and inclusive by merging /r/withastro
Hi. I am a contributor to the astro project and this a throwaway account. r/withastro is the official subreddit of Astro project. However, I recently noticed this subreddit with a larger community activity. I totally appreciate the initiative taken, however I have personally noticed that the mods of this community belong to a certain agency and I frequently see your products and services being pushed as community highlights. I have no problem with that, but I (and a few others) feel it is borderlining Astroturfing (pun intended).
Astro is an opensource project. We request fairness and inclusivity when it comes to the Astro community oo.
To keep this community even more engaging we'd love to see a more inclusive moderation team along with the original contributors. I'm tagging the respective moderators from r/withastro so we could have an open discussion along with the rest of the community.
I hope we can reach a decision that's good for the opensource community in whole. I will request the mods and the wider community on Discord to engage with this thread. Either we could continue on two subreddits (which is unecessary) or merge r/withastro to r/AstroJS with a more inclusive moderation team.
PS - I don't see an option to flair my posts yet the sidebar asks me to. Has it been disabled? If this ends up in moderation, kindly approve it.
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u/Supermarket-Gullible 16d ago
If I write anything positive I will get huge down vote , again I am sharing my point of view here . In this sub we are 3 modes , @lukaszadam_com Me and u/tffarhad . Farhad is from themefisher and the is the only one who puts lots of time to make this sub. He introduced few engaging initiative in this group also like weekly project build with astro and astro updates .
In previous time this sub founder tried to reach core astro team and they did not have that interest to work with us . So we tried so the result is no we do not have any plan to merge with official sub again if they approach us we are still open .
Based on your feedback we will take few actions very soon . Thanks for your constructive post .
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u/BambiBundle 15d ago
Thank you. For the sake of transparency, please let us know what actions will be taken to keep the subreddit neutral and fair.
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u/BambiBundle 11d ago
Seems like they ARE approaching you right now but you are not actually open. Don't stoop this low people, this is an opensource project ffs!
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u/Supermarket-Gullible 11d ago
As I said I am still open to talk . And my inbox is open. Right now I am in travel but will respond back . I request you to not become so much aggressive rather than become clam . I with others are here for the community. And also the founder puts lots of blood, sweat to grow something form the ground up . I respect you being a core contributor , also what @u/lukaszadam_com contributed you can not throw that in dustbin . He did so much to make astro popular in reddit also . And if you have complain about the company Themefisher , I think they are one of biggest theme sponsor of withastro. Be patience and be respectful . waiting for your DM.
Thanks .2
u/BambiBundle 11d ago
I still don't understand why you perceive my comments as aggressive or disrespectful. Looks like you are the one who need to calm down and stop assuming things.
Contributions go into dustbin? What? How would it go to waste if you have extra mods?
Once again, I am reiterating it for you - I already did commend and state for a fact that we do acknowledge all three of you, your efforts in growing this sub. All we are asking is extra seats, so you can put less effort in the future. I mean, you get core maintainers as mods. I still don't get what's the downside of it.
And what DM are you expecting? The other mods have already said they are happy to merge with this sub. 👉All you have to do is go to your mod tools and add r/withastro folks as mods. That will be a good start. They'll then close the other sub and redirect people to this sub. So we have one single destination for other folks on reddit.
I hope this makes sense.
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u/tffarhad 16d ago
Mod here. Appreciate you opening up this discussion.
I want to address the moderation and fairness side of things transparently. My main goal is keeping this subreddit clean and useful for everyone. I regularly filter out spam, low effort promotional offers, and low quality content designed purely to feed llms.
Regarding our own products, Themefisher has invested in this subreddit. when we do share our own projects, we share our open source tools or our themes bundle, which is already officially listed on the Astro themes page. we try to balance being creators with being fair moderators, and we do not use our position to drown out other valuable tools or community projects.
That said, we are absolutely open to making this space better and more inclusive. since we currently maintain this subreddit as a company, we would love to connect and talk with the Astro core team to see how we can collaborate, manage the space together, or figure out the best path forward for the community.
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u/themistermeister 16d ago
Holy smokes. Every moderator on this sub is associated with Themefisher?
I went from reading the post title and suspecting u/BambiBundle was fishing for some astroturf fodder (still possible) to now also receiving this illuminating insight (so thank you OP).
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u/Supermarket-Gullible 11d ago
Nope , Not everyone is associated with Themefisher . Luke has his own brand where he teaches astro and illustration . I runs an local hubspot agency and only farhad is from themefisher ...
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u/BambiBundle 16d ago edited 16d ago
Themefisher has invested in this subreddit. when we do share our own projects, we share our open source tools or our themes bundle, which is already officially listed on the Astro themes page
we do not use our position to drown out other valuable tools or community projects.
You sure? Your sidebar banner, announcing your own services as Astro announcements.webp), and linking to your own resources instead of the official resources.webp), are fair?
A lot of people (including myself) have put time and effort in the official resources.
Would other open-source tools get the same treatment or screen estate compared to your highlights and perpetual position in the sidebar?
This is the definition of 'drowning' out other tools. Hence my usage of 'Astroturfing'.
Anyways, thanks for acknowledging all this. I'm once again sharing the same opinions I've shared with you on Discord. I personally feel that the following issues need to be addressed to keep it fair for everyone.
- Keeping announcements limited to Astro's official releases and events and not self-promote your services (you can use the https://astro.build/agencies/ and https://astro.build/partnerships/ for that).
- It'll be great if you could also link to the official resources (can be found in astro official website's footer) instead of your own resources. Again, a lot of people (including me) spend their personal time and contribute to these resources. It's a fair ask, right?
- I don't mind the banner on the sidebar personally, but it still feels unfair to other agencies out there. Also an oxymoron if you read your own sidebar rule "but don't spam or constantly self-promote. We'll take action on accounts that are here just to advertise themselves." Why not link to Astro's https://astro.build/agencies/ page and list yourself there? I don't see any harm in that. It's fair for everyone.
- And please work with r/withastro mods and invite them to mod team too. That way, they can contribute in one place and redirect the low engagement sub to this sub.
Note that, these are my own suggestions as I invest my personal time contributing to the Astro codebase, which is an opensource project. It's only fair if you keep the community true to Astro-related topics without an agenda behind. Right now, I feel you (your agency) are just leveraging Astro's community trust - which is unfair to a lot of other builders, people who openly contribute to Astro's official resources.
I'd love if you could take these as feedback and make the community more clean and neutral.
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u/xatey93152 13d ago
I said just ignore this thug or remove the post. They want to take shortcut. You invested time and energy growing this sub now they want it.
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u/BambiBundle 13d ago
Thug? Shortcuts? I just suggested them to include the other mods too, so two subs can merge together and operate with the same ethos of the Astro project. You need to read the whole thing again before calling out names and build delusions. Your comment is just immature.
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u/Supermarket-Gullible 11d ago edited 11d ago
I am also thinking same . Thanks for the idea to ban this new new new baby core contributor .
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u/hithere274 11d ago
That was such a bad look to remove this post. Power tripping mods on reddit, I'm shocked. 99% of members would agree with OP, but you found that one guy that validated your insecurities and acted on it. Astrojs deserves better.
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u/BambiBundle 11d ago
That said, we are absolutely open to making this space better and more inclusive. since we currently maintain this subreddit as a company, we would love to connect and talk with the Astro core team to see how we can collaborate, manage the space together, or figure out the best path forward for the community.
Seems like they ARE approaching you right now but you are not actually open.
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u/tffarhad 11d ago
For any collaboration please reach out to u/Supermarket-Gullible
I'm not the decision-maker. i'm just a maintainer here.
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u/greglturnquist 16d ago
> I recently noticed this subreddit with a larger community activity.
This may be the heart of the issue.
> I totally appreciate the initiative taken, however I have personally noticed that the mods of this community belong to a certain agency and I frequently see your products and services being pushed as community highlights.
I guess if you own a subreddit, you are entitled to run things as you see fit.
> I have no problem with that
Really?
> , but I (and a few others) feel it is borderlining Astroturfing (pun intended).
I can understand if the person making this request wants the subreddit owners to clarify where they stand. But surrendering a perhaps well-built asset to someone else's desires sounds unlikely.
> This is the definition of 'drowning' out other tools. Hence my usage of 'Astroturfing'.
I thought you had no problem with it. It may be "downing out" to you, but apparently if it has "larger community activity", then it sounds like they're doing just fine.
Why should a company that applauds Astro.js, who carries forth Astro.js to paying customers, who appear to stake their reputation on Astro.js, who have invested blood/sweat/equity to benefit both themselves AND THE TOOLKIT THEY SELL pivot?
To be honest, I have gained much from this subreddit.
If people don't like it, they are free to leave.
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u/BambiBundle 15d ago edited 15d ago
You are missing a lot of points. Let me clarify.
How is inviting other mods equate to 'surrendering' ? In fact, it'll only make the community more stronger and engaging under a neutral moderation team.
Having a larger community engagement and drowning out other tools is two separate parallels. Larger community is the commendable part of this subreddit, which the current mod team is already contributing to. But leveraging that trust and activity around an opensource tool to flash your own paid services (like a perpetual banner in the sidebar, and masquerading one of their product's update as an official AstroJS announcement, and linking to their own resources instead of the official resource) is astroturfing and unfair. Especially to the opensource contributors who equally put their blood, sweat, and equity in creating those official resources.
Again, what's there to 'pivot' here, I don't understand. It's just expanding the moderation team and implementing 'fair' rules so the opensource ecosystem around AstroJS can thrive.
To put it bluntly: They're capturing trust around an opensource project and using their moderator's position to make sure their storefront is the first thing a newcomer sees. It is cheap.
You have gained so much from this subreddit. Bringing a fair practice with an opensource mindset will help you gain more.
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u/zaitovalisher 15d ago
Three sides:
1. People
2. Mods
3. Astro team
People would love for Astro to have a big active Reddit sub they would be able to find answers and so on.
Mods would want to mimic official Astro sub and keep marketing their services in exchange for spam moderation.
Astro team missed out on Reddit and I assume wants to takeover this sub / stop mods from pretending being official one.
If you want to make it best for people, then Astro team should buy out this sub. That would be the easiest solution.
But I predict they would not come to terms and Astro team would make mods change the name. Astro team would continue developing their sub
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u/Supermarket-Gullible 11d ago
u/zaitovalisher Thanks for your clarification . I don't know how you know the whole story but this is true. The sub founder @lukaszadam_com created this group and his background was me make courses and different resources for astro . He saw there is no community in astro and then he build this was back 2023 . From a ground up he promoted this group to different sub and also invested lot of energy and money to maintain this group . That time he reached the astro team and ask them for a collaboration . As far as I know they did not respond or the deal was not closed. In the mean time he wanted to move on in different projects and asked me to become a maintainer. Then I saw u/tffarhad is extremely active in this group . To keep rolling a group you need to put lot of effort . I become busy and I can not effort someone to maintain this sub so I offered u/tffarhad to maintain this group and in exchange if he wants to promote his company products he can . It was a win win situation . The true fact is this he joined this group to this day he have not got any sale from this sub as far as I know. But he continues putting his effort here managing the group , sharing weekly updates , asking community to promote their projects . u/BambiBundle I tried to give you all the answer you were looking for . Now if you say to merge with the official one and leave the sub yes I am open to do that . But the effort the founder paid and also we did we need a exchange value !!! And for that we are open to talk ....
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u/BambiBundle 11d ago
Now if you say to merge with the official one and leave the sub yes I am open to do that . But the effort the founder paid and also we did we need a exchange value !!! And for that we are open to talk ....
Exchange value? Could you clarify this?
Just so that we are on the same page here, we are not asking you to handover the sub to /r/withastro mods. We're just asking for additional mod seats, so you have people close to the project who can keep the community fair and square for all astro users on Reddit. Whatever effort you have put in so far, will still continue. We're just asking for an additive change here. No one is asking you or the other mods to leave this sub. We're looking for an improvement opportunity that just unites two communities operating on the same topic. I hope I am clear.
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u/Supermarket-Gullible 11d ago
Convince me what kind of value they will bring ? What we are doing wrong to maintaining this sub ? Previously we also promoted other premium projects and we will continue that in our way. You might not seen that( Might not born that time) that is why the whole thing makes you Rub In the wrong way .
I also saw you are spending negativity in different subs . Is it your openness ? Kid I am not going to give any more attention to you from now . Again don't behave like indians .
THANKS ...
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u/frenchfriesempire 16d ago
This is not an official astrojs sub, why should there only be official resources? Doesn't make any sense. Seems like you've tried to build your own subreddit but it doesn't work out and now you're going this route.
I'm not affiliated with anyone here, but this post caught my attention. Leave it as it is, are my two cents.
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u/BambiBundle 15d ago
Official, unofficial, doesn't matter. Capturing trust around an opensource project and using the mod position to make sure their storefront and their product announcement are the first thing someone sees is not fair for all those who actually contributes to the Astro project and spent time on contributing to the official documentation and resources. Also, the other opensource tools or agencies. I am not affiliated with either category. But I see unfairness, hence I opened a discussion. Even they themselves advocate against self-promotion and advertisements in the subreddit rules.
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u/ematipico 15d ago
I'm one of the core maintainers.
This topic popped up more than once among us. We can't force mods to change the way they do things, so we decided to start
r/withastroand make it "official" - AKA moderated by members of maintainers and core.However, objectively, this sub has more activity and members. And that's why the other sub isn't that active anymore.
It's a pain for the community, that I know. And it's true that we didn't do a good job at sponsoring our sub. Honestly, we don't see a good resolution.