I am not worthy (to post on reddit)

I like reddit – I hit it three to five times a week to see what's at the top. Mostly I read a couple of items in the hot list. I try to read a couple in new at times – and vote for the ones I have a strong opinion on. I rarely comment because I usually don't have anything substantive to add (mostly do to existing comments that state what I was going to say).

And in the past I have almost never submitted links to reddit. I appreciate those who do but I don't have the time (nor to be honest the inclination) to go find good posts of wide interest to submit. The good posts I come across tend to have very narrow interest. I don't want to degrade reddit by posting links of little to no interest to the vast majority.

In short, for a long time I've benefitted from reddit but I haven't contributed. And then it hit me… I can write pretty well and in 35 years in the industry I've learned some things that are of general interest and that readers might find interesting. So I wrote a post on time zones. And in two days it got 10,000 hits – a large chunk via reddit. So I figured great – I've found a way to give back.

My goal was to write a post like this every couple of weeks. Some were popular, some were not. But about 50% of them got a lot of interest – strong votes on sites like dzone, reddit (pre blocking), etc., nice comments, and lots of traffic. And I'd found a way to give back – each of these posts takes about 2 hours to write (I put a lot of time into finding just the right way to say something), but people are reading it.

But then on r/programming posts by me were set to auto-hide by a moderator, because I only submit my own content. I've never understood this viewpoint - some of us are good at writing (I think I'm one), some of us are good at finding quality posts (I'm not), some of us are good at commenting (I generally have nothing to add).

Why is it some think you must be good at all to participate? Those of us that only create content are, I think, worthy too. And if a post is good, if it will generate hundreds of votes and comments and tens of thousands of readers, is that not a good thing? I could understand this if I had submitted 10 posts and they were all drek – but the votes & comments (pre blocking) show that what I submitted was, if not Shakespeare, decent content.

This is my plea to the moderators on r/programming – let my posts be read. And let others who only write also be read.

Comments

[Carl Lajeunesse also known as Nettogrof]

I personally nerver use reddit. To tell the truth I found your blog via dzone. And btw , you're not Shakespeare, but yeah your content is decent. At Least this post give me a antoher argument to not look at reddit anymore...

[Giorgio Sironi]

I also get repeatedly downvoted for posting my own content, while the same articles at DZone become Big Links. I guess the majority of people on reddit have simply no social skills. I stop submitting to reddit back in 2009.

[Andrew]

I lurk on reddit. However seems that this policy is targeted against spammers trying to generate traffic / self promotion. Self promotion isn't necessarily a bad thing though, if it's relevant content. Found this via dzone.

[Mark Dennehy]

Same thing's happened to me for similar reasons :(

[Arash Mazinani]

I agree with your take on reddit's policy they even stopped posting posts that were not related to my blog, so anything that I posted would not show up. I'm looking for alternatives at the moment as my niche is actually fashion and have yet to find any.

[Eurig Jones]

I'm in exactly the same position. I'm posting relevant content to relevant reddits which people clearly appreciate and comment on, then all of a sudden none of my posts show up.

There is nothing wrong with self promotion if it's relevant and useful information.

What I don't like about linking on the site it that it won't give you any explanation whatsoever as to why the link you posted did not show up (Not just posts to your own blog etc) which makes the system very hard to understand, especially for a newcomer.