Yeah; almost all the subreddits with more than a few thousand members have decided you can't post any links to anything of your own, labeling it self promotion. I think corporate blogspam is to blame.

But I have been soft-banned from the Raspberry Pi subreddit for years (which is rich!) for self promotion since I used to link to my blog posts about various Pi topics.

So I started doing text posts, and would have 3-5 paragraphs about the topic, then at the bottom a link for more info to my blog post. Nope, self-promotion.

I had similar issues in many other places, and in a lot of subs, even if you post a link, if you forget to also add a comment with specific points, or set flair after posting... all kinds of arcane rules, then your post will get deleted.

I haven't been banned from any sub AFAICT, but mods are swift to ban for almost any reason these days, especially for anyone who dares to challenge whatever the groupthink is (in the Apple sub, it was basically "if you dare put Apple in a bad light or question anything they do" for a time, I think I may have been banned there for posting a complaint about the Touch Bar!).

>But I have been soft-banned from the Raspberry Pi subreddit for years (which is rich!) for self promotion since I used to link to my blog posts about various Pi topics.

"I was banned from a subreddit for self promotion since I promoted my own blog"

Like, come on man.

Yes, I agree, in general.

But to be completely fair to him, it's Jeff Geerling.

Being hyperbolic here, but practically all the content in the Pi (and Homelab, and several other subreddits) is either directly his or in some way derivative of his work. He has just put in that much time and effort into this space.

So the same post that got deleted would have likely been reposted, with less context, minutes later. Likely multiple times by multiple different people.

This comes more from a background of "link-sharing sites work by people posting links with original and interesting content that a community would like."

And Reddit (and HN, and Digg, etc.) started out as link-sharing sites.

If not for "self-promotion", new blogs would never have been noticed once the era of blog rings died off and Google tried (and partially succeeded) killing RSS.

I think blatant self-promotion for selling things is wrong. But writing a blog post with information relevant to a community and sharing that seems like it's useful. If the community thinks it's spammy, then the community can flag it or downvote it.

Just get your good friend "Geff Jeerling" to post them instead. ;)

I think it boils down to the sad fact that "writing a blog post with information relevant to a community and sharing that" has become somewhat of a minority case for blogs nowadays. They are generally either "self-promotion for selling things" (blatant or not) which you mentioned, or just straight up blogspam (almost always blatant). And when your job is to moderate a large community, you don't really have time to go in and evaluate whether each and every single post is the latter two or an earnest attempt at getting information across.

> If the community thinks it's spammy, then the community can flag it or downvote it.

In theory, yes. If everyone used the voting and reporting system appropriately, and people whose posts were reported took the judgement tactfully and with grace. But I've seen people constantly argue that "what they said wasn't against the rules" just because it wasn't explicitly listed as a rule.

When a moderator's job is already so loaded, they're going to push for making their lives easier. Blanket banning "self-promotion" means it's a simple decision when it does get reported and makes it harder to argue against a removal.

FWIW, I think the model you mentioned works a lot better here, where there's a bit more of a professional bias, and especially when people have linked their real-world professional identities with their accounts. It adds a level of courtesy and assumption of best intent that isn't as prevalent on Reddit.

I can confirm it is not just you. I’ve had similar experiences in other subreddits. Eventually I just stopped trying because it’s super demoralizing trying to navigate the myriad of rules in each subreddit.

You’re not crazy.

Others have noticed the very same effect and felt disenfranchised by it.

In some subreddits your post gets removed because the title didn’t end in a period.

It results in subreddits full of boring recycled dreck, because the smart folks take their ball and go home.

Any subreddit that gets on "/all" regularly is owned by a few megamods, and their point is to make reddit money with advertising, not to be a useful community.

Even if they wanted to actually be a useful community, the tools mods get on reddit are woefully unfit for purpose for communities of millions of people. You cannot have a public forum with that many people. The human brain is just not built for it. Perfect moderation is impossible

I’ve had similar experiences in other subreddits, yep. Not so much things being removed, though. Instead I ask nicely for help with learning something and get fried with “you’re doing this all wrong, lrn2notsuck noob” responses, or I spend a good chunk of time on a thoughtful response to a question and it gets no votes or responses at all.

Some subreddits are notable exceptions, though—-those are the ones I’ll actually miss if this thing collapses. By and large, they’re small, very focused subreddits on particular topics; seems like once a subreddit reaches a certain size it just collapses into the above mess of behaviors.

Isn't that the old Linux joke? Ask nicely for help with Linux and people will tell you to go pound sand. Instead say "Linux sucks because it can't do this..." and tons of people will show up saying "No, you are wrong! Linux can do it, you just need to..."

huh? got an example? I've been to quite a few topical FOSS oriented subs and i'm happy for the no self-promotion rules.

It's usually a bunch of people making an inferior version of neofetch or whatever basic tool is well known to the community.