Helping to make the sub more helpful

Posted by Ell2509@reddit | LocalLLaMA | View on Reddit | 42 comments

I like to help out on this sub and spend a lot of time reading / answering questions to help people getting into AI. Today I spotted a post where someone was asking for advice on models between certain sizes. I clicked on it when it was 1 min old, and wrote a quick answer. It got blocked because the thread had already been locked.

The mod message under the post said the user should habe used a particular thread, which they kindly linked.

I went to read the rules, to see which one they actually fell foul of, and I realised that their post didn't actually break any of the 5 listed rules. It was especially not low effort.

Now, I understand the need to prevent a flood of similar posts, but the one thread solution just feels awful. I open it and am faced immediately with 12 day old comments. It puts a whole wall between the casual user who might be able to help, and the person needing help.

Not suggesting you open it up... but i do think this kind of thing is worth finding a good solution to. Having an interactive and supportive community is something that a lot of sub admits try desperately to encourage, because it keeps people around... my advice is to make that as easy as possible for people!

Cheers!

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Oh, and if they guy who made that post sees this, o was going to say:

With 16gb vram and 64gb dram, I don't know why you are limiting yourself like that.

Try Gemma 4 31b. If that is too slow, try Gemma 4 26b.the 26b is an MoE, and I have run it at speed on a 6gb 2060 laptop gpu and ram spillover.

Try qwen3.6 35b a3b in Q6 and Q4. It is a fantastic model, and it will run on your rig. I have run this model on the 6gb vram laptop too.

Why are you focused on max 32b?

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ttkciar@reddit

The mod message under the post said the user should habe used a particular thread, which they kindly linked.

That was me, and I appreciate your feedback.

Redirecting model recommendations to the dedicated thread is new for this sub, and I've been wondering if it's been the right thing to do.

Until now, the only feedback I got was in the form of upvotes and downvotes on my redirect comments, and it's been a mix of both.

The main problem I've seen with it is that it doesn't actually decrease the number of "what model for meee?" posts cluttering the sub, which was one of the things the dedicated thread was hoped to accomplish.

If the dedicated thread is too difficult to navigate, like OP suggests, that's another reason to rethink the whole thing.

Further community input would be very welcome! Whatever points get raised will be discussed within the moderator team, and if we can figure out a better way forward, we will change direction.

Our goals are twofold: First, to provide a way people can easily look up recent community model recommendations for different tasks and hardware. Second, to declutter the sub's feed of requests for model recommendations.

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rinmperdinck@reddit

Forcing everyone into a megathread is a bad way to treat your community. People will get less engagement on their posts and it is harder to navigate through a megatheead as a reader to find information.

Besides, megathreads on Reddit are unnecessary in general. If people don't like a post they will downvote it, that's the upvote/downvote system doing its job. If people don't want to see a post they can downvote and scroll past it - it doesn't affect their browsing experience on the sub at all. Also worth mentioning that leaving these threads around helps anyone who wants to search or Google through the sub weeks, months or years later to find that info easier.

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tomByrer@reddit

I agree.
& leaving threads around helps LLMs find info.
I wonder how well LLMs read megathreads vs normal posts?

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rinmperdinck@reddit

LLMs probably find info equally well in normal threads or megathreads, but as a human scrolling through Reddit, megathreads have always sucked to scroll through.

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tomByrer@reddit

as a human scrolling through Reddit, megathreads have always sucked

+1
I don't bother; too many other options than that sardine can.

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ttkciar@reddit

Finally got around to trying this. I slurped the megathread contents and filtered it lightly just with grep to get rid of some of the Reddit-cruft, and wrote "modelforme" scripts for GLM-4.5-Air and Gemma-4-26B-A4B-it.

Those scripts take a specification as input, and wrap that and the cleaned megathread content in a prompt with appropriate instructions and framing.

GLM-4.5-Air did a pretty great job, but on my hardware it took over an hour to get there:

http://ciar.org/h/1141af8.txt

Gemma-4-26B-A4B-it is a lot faster, since it fits in my VRAM, but prompt processing took a long time because my MI50 is just like that.

It almost did a good job, but kind of flopped at fitting the model to hardware, suggesting Minimax-M2.7 as suitable for 16GB of VRAM!

http://ciar.org/h/1141b76.txt

I'm thinking the way forward might be to periodically (re)process the megathreads with GLM-4.5-Air and have it construct a list of models, annotated with suitable hardware and use-cases, and feed that into Gemma4 on demand instead of the raw megathread content.

I think that should help Gemma4 pick out better matches, and also cut down on prompt processing time, but we will see.

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ttkciar@reddit

I wonder how well LLMs read megathreads vs normal posts?

You read my mind. I'm going to try writing a script which slurps the megathread and use it to answer model recommendation questions.

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Party-Special-5177@reddit

If people don't like a post they will downvote it, that's the upvote/downvote system doing its job. If people don't want to see a post they can downvote and scroll past it…

Seeing the downvotes on this post is ironic lol.

Despite meta-aggregators like reddit being originally conceived to be self organizing, it seems that people really do prefer curated feeds, which tends to demote the voting from a sorting system into merely an indicator of group interest.

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rinmperdinck@reddit

Yeah I definitely get the vibe not only on this subreddit, but Reddit as a whole these days that people want it to not be a community for everyone but instead just a personally curated content feed. It's pretty gross to see happening, though we are at least like 6-7 years into this enshitted version of Reddit, I guess I should be used to it by now.

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thread-e-printing@reddit

The mission of reddit has always been to provide space for topics, not vibes for everyone. This new "community" norm you're trying to "loss" into existence is your own invention. Social media doesn't need to be a smooth space.

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rinmperdinck@reddit

The mission of reddit has always been to provide space for topics, not vibes for everyone.The mission of reddit has always been to provide space for topics, not vibes for everyone.

So... you agree with me? Then why the weirdly rude and hostile comment? Did you just see the word "vibe" and have a brain aneurysm and not read the rest of my comment?

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Evening_Ad6637@reddit

I think we need something like matrix. I know we have discord, but a lot of people don’t want to be depending on a one more corpo shit centralizing the communication between humans, including myself.

I would love to actively support a decentralized localllama platform and to help maintaining it

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thirteen-bit@reddit

As far as I know Discord is not visible from outside world.

E.g. I'm searching (google / ddg / bing) for some keywords (for example "exl3 gguf awq") - there are reddit links usually but never discord.

As I'm not using Discord myself - is there some way to search it?

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ttkciar@reddit

Discord has its own search function, which is okay. It's no Google, but does work.

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Evening_Ad6637@reddit

I’ve no clue, I’m not a discord user as well

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Mart-McUH@reddit

There is another problem with it. When you lock the thread you put some link to meghathread, but it goes to some old reddit something with completely different design and everything, does not look very trustworthy.

Also as other points out, such Megathread on this large sub is just too big to navigate. Sillytavern has similar thing, but much less contributors, so there it more or less works (but it is weekly megathread with only RP/creative writing LLM and by the end of week it is sometimes also too cluttered).

There is likely no ideal solution here.

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ttkciar@reddit

When you lock the thread you put some link to meghathread, but it goes to some old reddit something with completely different design and everything, does not look very trustworthy.

Ah, yeah, I see what you mean.

I browse Reddit using the "old" interface, so when I paste links to the megathread, they are to old.reddit.com locations.

I'll see if there's a way to link to threads in an interface-agnostic manner (so new-interface users get the new interface and old-interface users get the old), but if that's not possible I should probably switch to linking to the new-interface locations.

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pmttyji@reddit

u/rm-rf-rm Though we have additional (hidden) Flair called Megathread, it's not appearing on all Megathread related threads.

For example, below one doesn't have Megathread Flair

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1sknx6n/best_local_llms_apr_2026/

Below filter(Flair = Megathread) shows only 4 threads

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/?f=flair_name%3A%22Megathread%22

So please ensure all Megathreads have Megathread Flair.

I do visit ST's megathreads that way regularly

https://www.reddit.com/r/SillyTavernAI/?f=flair_name%3A%22MEGATHREAD%22

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deepspace86@reddit

I don't envy the moderators for this sub right now. We've progressed from a kind of "DOS" era of LLMs to something a bit more plug and play over the last year or so. At the same time, this sub remains the best source for self-hostable llm news on the internet, bar-none. Those 2 factors combine to bring newbies to this space and they may even be using reddit for the first time and don't have the perspective and historical context that many of the users who have been around since before safetensor files were a thing. Its going to take a lot of push and pull to find a balance with these rules.

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DeepOrangeSky@reddit

What if you guys made a sticky thread, for one week apiece, for each of the main, most popular hardware setups that lots of people tend to use/ask about model advice for on here all the time, as in:

Week 1: m-series macs using LM Studio, or using MLX

Week 2: single RTX 3k, 4k, 5k, or 6k, using llama.cpp

Week 3: single RTX 3k, 4k, 5k, or 6k using vLLM

Week 4: Two-or-more-cards using llama.cpp

Week 5: no-card setup using lots of channels and RAID 0

Week 6: so on and so forth (you get the idea) or cycle restarts and repeats all over again (since the model landscape is different again) (not sure how many weeks between restarts, like 6 weeks, or 8 weeks, or 10 weeks, depending how many main setup types are important to have in the cycles at hand)

With the weekly "setup type" thread asking people what models work particularly well on their rig, and what sorts of performance they are getting with what types of settings on what exact setup relative to that overall setup category at hand.

The idea being, if it is just some very general overall "models thread" like the April Models thread we had this past month, then, redirecting people making these "best model for my ____ setup?" threads all the time might not be ideal for them. But, if instead it was a weekly sticky thread, cycling through each of the most common/asked about setups for a week, each (not all at the same time, that would be too many stickies, so just one per week, or maybe 2 at the most per week if 1-per-week wouldn't cycle through enough of them on a reasonable enough timescale given the speed of new model releases constantly coming out), then there would be an actual thread specifically about their type of setup and which models are good and at what levels for their setup and so on, so, it would potentially be like 10x-100x better of a redirect thread to redirect these types of questions to than if it was just a very general all-models-on-any-setup monthly thread, by comparison.

I dunno, I'm just a noob, so maybe that is not a good idea, not really sure, but anyway, just something I was thinking, if maybe it helps

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tomByrer@reddit

Things change on a weekly basis in the LLM world.

Best bet is for folks FIRST to use the search function or their BraveAI/GoogleAI/whatever chat & ask there what is best, since they all suck up reddit anyhow.

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DeepOrangeSky@reddit

Yea, although I think for main daily driver models it is often around ~8 weeks to ~10 weeks or so on average before people change to something newer and better, so even a cycle of that length could still be useful if it had dedicated threads for the different main setup types.

The other thing is, in addition to being useful for recommending models (both in general and for different setups), it would also serve a 2nd useful purpose of being setup threads for the main setups where people would be able to discuss the setups themselves in those threads as it cycled through the various main types of rigs/setups, which would be nice to have a weekly sticky thread of that kept cycling through the various main setups one after the other on a weekly basis, switching to a different main type each week.

Anyway, I agree it is of course always a good idea for people to do some searches before they make a question thread on here, but, even still, it could be a fun idea for the mods to consider experimenting with for a couple weeks, just to see if people seem to like it and contribute a lot to the various weekly setup-type threads. And if people don't like it or contribute to them much or it doesn't end up being very useful or worthy of a weekly sticky thread, then, they could just cancel it or make some altered version or what have you, so, the stakes wouldn't necessarily be very high.

Anyway, just a random idea to consider, if they are feeling experimental :p

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tomByrer@reddit

I think you got too trigger-happy on deleting this post; current news in a local LLM is a tool issue, NOT a model issue.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1swgzgu/best_ai_model_at_2026_events_mus_tbe_local/

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tomByrer@reddit

> "what model for meee"

That could be it's own sub!
But sometimes it is not just the model, but the runtime or other factors than also need to change.

Also, I wish those model recommendation websites would be more updated; they're usually months behind, & that is old news.

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Ell2509@reddit (OP)

I tried to DM you but can't find a button. Have tried following so maybe you can see me now?

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ttkciar@reddit

I turned off DMs because it was being inundated by spam.

If you're not comfortable just saying something in a comment, feel free to reach out on the Discord server (I'm ttkciar there, too) or email me at ttk (at) ciar (dot) org.

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Ell2509@reddit (OP)

Will do! It is late here so I will reach out tomorrow.

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Ell2509@reddit (OP)

Wow, well done on being so responsive. 👏

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FoxiPanda@reddit

I agree with the megathread navigation difficulties. If I pop in and see monthly thread that has 250+ replies, I'm honestly going to nope out without some sort of navigation at the top or a very solid regularly updated pinned auto-summary (ironic I know).

For the 'high effort' version of a model recommendation ask, I'm happy to pop in, take a look at their hardware specs, see what they're trying to do (code, vision analysis, general chatbot, Tarantino-meets-DCC-AI-foot-fetish, whatever) and see if I can point them in a direction. The low effort version is usually either 1) ai written or 2) looks like a toddler wrote it (cn u hlp mepic a modal plz) with no context or anything...I just ignore and downvote those.

It's a tricky balance to strike I think and I honestly don't envy the decision makers there, but I appreciate you trying stuff.

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AnomalyNexus@reddit

The “I have x card and what model is best” type threads are a bit much so kinda glad it’s getting locked. Like at least make half an effort and try a few under you own steam…

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BitGreen1270@reddit

I made a post yesterday which also got removed automatically by filters. I messaged the mods about it but no response yet. A reason on why it was removed would be helpful.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1sw3ljw/how_to_get_better_at_optimising_llamacpp/

Do I not have enough karma?

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Ell2509@reddit (OP)

Looking at the post, I would guess it was removed for being low effort.

You need to be more specific in what you are asking. But it is hard to tell without being the full content.

Also, i am not a mod. Just a person.

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BitGreen1270@reddit

Just updated my comment with the post. It's something I genuinely tried looking for by myself but couldn't find it.

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loudsound-org@reddit

I made a post today that seems to have been "removed by reddit filters". No idea why.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/s/MaTJt7ei0p

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Ell2509@reddit (OP)

I'm not a mod, although there are mods here so you could reply to one of them.

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Lost-Health-8675@reddit

Bravo!

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Ell2509@reddit (OP)

Thanks :)

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bt0wnsfin3st@reddit

thanks for you post and you contributing to this community.

do you mind if I DM you about a question I have?

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Ell2509@reddit (OP)

Sure dm me. Or if my account is locked down I can do you. Unsure of my privacy settings on here.