On Sun, January 27, 2013 16:46, Harry Prevor wrote:
> On 1/27/13, Bader SZ <address@hidden> wrote:
>> For those who do not already know, reddit.com <http://www.reddit.com/>
>> is an online site where the users can set up communities, share links
>> and posts. It is Free Software, and minimal information is required to
>> set up an account. My proposition is for this community to set up a
>> subreddit, since the community's identi.ca is not very active. If a
>> descent number of people agree, I will personally moderate the subreddit
>> along with a group of people who are familiar with Reddit and would like
>> to assist me. Please email me if you have any questions or comments.
>
> As a long-time Redditor (see /u/habstinat) and avid follower of
> /r/linux and /r/gnu, I think this could be a great idea. Recently I
> tried to use Reddit to get people to design a logo for OpenPhoenux
> (manufacturers of the once-Openmoko GTA04 "truly free" GNU/Linux
> smartphones) and it was a huge success, getting to the top spot of
> /r/linux <http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/16fski/> and close to
> the top of /r/picrequests, yeilding almost a dozen logo submissions,
> most of which were very professional looking:
> <http://www.openphoenux.org/logo/>. It also sparked some interest in
> OpenPhoenux and I'm sure resulted in at least a few purchases.
>
> To avoid the similar fate of /r/freeculture and the like, we need to
> aggressively promote the subreddit in /r/newreddits, /r/linux, /r/gnu,
> et al. I'd definitely be interested in helping you start this up /
> moderate this.
Two years is not that long on Reddit. I've been registered
/u/thesilentnumber/ for five years. I moderate several reddits, many with
thousands of subscribers, and am in /r/mods50k for having successful
reddits. I started Global Reddit Meetup Day, and have been involved with
Reddit for a long time. I have a lot of experience organizing communities
on reddit.
How? From failing a lot of times.
These rules are not specific to Reddit, but they apply very strongly here.
Consider what you are suggesting. You want to beat /r/freesoftware and
/r/freeculture with a more specific reddit, rather than contributing to
the existing ones, and it will succeed due to constant promotion, even
though it is more narrowly focused than the current communities.
This is a) splintering the community and b) completely unsustainable. It
will take away from the community you plan to start, and the existing
ones. There is no reason why your strategy (which only consists of heavy
promotion thus far) can't be applied to existing communities.
I won't stop you if you are committed to this, but I have seen (and even
experienced) this type of failure many times. I'm not saying that
connecting us to reddit communities is bad, but starting a new one would
be.