I don’t see users submitting their own content as a problem, as long as it’s on-topic.

Thus I don’t support this proposal.

Wow, that would be terrible.

Makers are the people I am looking for on the internet. Self made content and tools is what I like to read and play with.

I find the vast majority of content written by journalists boring. Because they don’t write about what interests them. But because they have to write. Every day. No matter if they have something to say or not.

And I am also not that interested in polished shiny new products made based on marketing research. I prefer to try tools that are rough around the edges but made out of necessity.

I’d like to encourage everyone here: Write something! Build something! And show it to us!

I don’t have a problem with people submitting their own content. It doesn’t matter who submitted it; if it’s blogspam or such, it’d get downvoted no matter who.

How would you find a new and interesting blog post when all communities ban this?

I don’t support this idea. Over the years I’ve derived significant value from posts the authors themselves shared here, and based on the discussions within those topics other members of the community are finding value as well. Frankly, I could not care less about the motives of the author so long as the content is relevant and thought-provoking. The community seems to handle low-content or spam posts with derision or neglect and the mods tend to do a good job of removing posts that are clearly not a fit. If you don’t think enough is being done to fight low-content posting then perhaps the discussion should be around that rather than calling to put in place policies that will undoubtedly discourage people from contributing to the community.

I think we should flip it around and encourage lobsters members (in good standing) to contribute back with their own writing.

But… I actually like reading articles from fellow lobsters!

I like seeing that the poster is the author; it means that they’ll be able to respond to comments and questions in a highly informed way.

A blanket ban seems like a bad idea since there are certainly some people who post good stuff that is relevant, for example @ltratt’s latest submission.

Drawing the line is really hard. Some accounts are just using the site to promote every little thing they write, regardless of how trivial it is, or they are submitting what are clearly unthought out code ideas with no real implementation behind them, possibly looking for feedback. I really don’t care for these submissions and I think they de-value the site.

I really want to discourage the latter and I really want to see more of the former. I’m content with the system of raising concerns on IRC or to the mods and having a judgement call made that way rather than banning it. Maybe we can stress something on the submission page.

I can certainly be blamed of doing this, all submissions of texts I wrote were posted by me (sadly). And if all I did here (not posting any other articles, not engaging in other discussions, or only below my posts), then I’d say it was wrong.

My hope is that by showing that I don’t regard Lobsters as a means to an end, I compensate this. When I post an article here, I do “profit” from this, because the link gets shared on other sites, and the chance is higher that it will be noticed due to the slower pace of the site. But at the same time, I enjoy – as I hope others do too – the (usually) informed discussions, asking critical questions, suggesting further resources, expanding on points, etc.

Tbh I have no idea where else I could find something like that, but here.

I don‘t have a strong opinion here (although a fair amount of my posts are self-submitted), but I want to note that „submitted by someone else“ biases the content to blogs by already famous bloggers.

If you are a new blog author and if you don‘t use Twitter/Facebook (my case), then it may be hard to make people notice your blog and subscribe to it by RSS without self posting. The reason why folks sometimes post links to my stuff is that I started with self-submitting interesting articles to r/rust several years ago.

that’s dang near the last thing wrong with lobste.rs 🤦‍♂️

I don’t support this. A fair chunk of things I read on this site are “self-promotion” by creative minds. @pushcx has been awesome at banning people who over-do it. Also, I don’t agree with “require at least 1 other person who isn’t you”, what gives leverage to that “other person” over the creator to determine what’s on-topic? We’re all members here.

If you’re concerned about the quality of posts, we already have a solution: flag (as spam or off-topic).

I’m surprised no one has mentioned there’s a “show” tag, which I think is used for sharing projects one has worked on and would very much be a form of self-promotion.

I don’t know OP. I would probably feel better about your proposal if someone else posted it for you.

The main selling point of lobsters to me is the authored posts and interaction in the comments. I’d rather not see a blanket ban just because there’s some abuse of it.

As a data point, I’ve posted ~two things that I authored, both of which I strongly expect no one else would have come across (I don’t have a strong “brand” and don’t use any one blog regularly). One received 15 upvotes and some encouraging discussion, the other received 57 upvotes and also mostly-encouraging discussion. I think neither was flagged even once. It seems to me that banning or discouraging authored-by posts would basically mean that no one would have read either of these, or similar submissions, and I (biased-ly) think that would at least be a cost of your proposal.

A thing that does consistently bother me, in a similar vein (for example with this proposal) is that comments seem to count as upvotes, which makes unpopular-but-inflammatory posts stay on the home page for a long time.

I’m against this idea. That would make lobste.rs a pure reading community where writers and creators from the circle have no place.

I don’t support this proposal, because it’d block out a lot of good content, and @andyc’s posts on Oil. Do you think moderation isn’t keeping up with the problematic posts?

As someone who wants to start writing more content, I find this a little demotivating.

I have no desire to self-promote, but I do desire criticism of the posts that I author. It helps me become a better writer. And maybe I make mistakes that people on here could catch. I haven’t written many posts, and the ones I have aren’t submitted here. But I have been trying to get the motivation to write some because it’s a shame that what I want to write about doesn’t have much written about it before.

I’m also not that active either, so the activity-to-authored-posts ratio won’t be in my favour.

My 2-cents.

What about adding a “self” tag? Enforce one self’s content to be tagged if submitted, else ban/remove/etc.

What’s your plan to prevent people from creating sockpuppet account to keep posting their own content?

We have definitely had people abuse this, @pushcx cam almost certainly provide examples.

I think there is good content to be had this way–if we don’t want to see it abused though we need to aggressively flag bad actors.

I actually see this as a feature. The “authored” tag and everything - thought it is a big part of lobsters.

If someone submits content that you think shouldn’t be posted here the best action, in my opinion, is to hide it and don’t upvote it or even flag it. But if someone submits a super nice article with deep insight it would seem strange if we banned it just because the actual author was the one who is sharing it here.

As somebody who has posted their own content, I say this is a bad idea. You’re telling me that my participation is not wanted. NGL, it’s a bit of a slap in the face to say “the community would be better without this”

I have found most self submitted content to be of interest. That being said, submitting too often would be a problem. Some limit to the number of self submitted links?

I don’t support this. I think part of the value of this community is reading what other members are writing.

You’re right about the potential for problems, but that’s what voting and flagging are for. Seems to be working.

To me there’s a fundamental distinction between self-promotion — “look at my blog!” — and self-publishing — “consider my idea / research / work / opinion, which happens to be on my blog!” — and I think we should broadly and strongly encourage the latter while letting lack of votes and considered human moderation alone police egregious forms of the former.

Against this. Not that I remember posting more than one of my own, but I guess I’d have no problem just nagging a handful people here to submit it for me, if I wanted my stuff submitted so I don’t see how it would really help.

There’s indeed been an influx of shameless spam in the form of self-promotion lately.

The requirement of a layer of indirection would indeed help throttle this. After all, if it’s interesting enough to be in here, then it is likely that somebody else is going to post it.

I don’t see the benefit over the existing voting system. Surely if another person upvotes it, then it was approved by your standard?

That being said, self written posts could be limited to one a month/fortnight and probably not hurt anyone.

There’s a certain amount of low-value self-posting, but for the most part it doesn’t seem to float to the top, and people sharing their own work seems like a perfectly valid use case for sites like this one. I don’t support this restriction.

Also one thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that there is actually a hotness penalty for aggressive self-promotion. I’m not sure if this has changed recently since I looked at the code though.

I agree with most folks here that the mods are doing a good job and we shouldn’t blanket ban self posted content.

No.

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how bout self promotion is OK as long as what you link to has no tracking or ads

I posted a thing a while back basically in response to a conversation in #lobsters on IRC. I don’t have an “audience” really, so the blog post existed to be talked about with people here.

I also get annoyed at some self-promotion stuff (“sales pitches” in some sense), though hopefully spam-y content would get disincentivised in some other way. But I’m like 95% certain nobody would have read what I wrote if I couldn’t just post it here.

To be honest I don’t see that much annoying spam, I would hope that we could figure out some other quality axis to push back on this, cuz in the end if content is good it’s good, right?

So… I ask a friend to post something for me?