I'm not one to find content and post it terribly often. I'd much rather see it, think about it, and then discuss it. I imagine those who choose to only read and not participate fall in a similar boat, just without the need for discussion.
I'm not sure what might cause this. Is it a personality quirk? Or am I simply falling prey to the human desire to categorize everything and it really doesn't matter at all?
When I first started using reddit I got into posting all the time for a bit. I had been on other internet forums in the past, but reddit was much more addictive and much less personal. Then one day while riding my bike over a ridge with a sunset in the distance I realized that I was thinking about what I would write on reddit instead of what was happening. I decided to take a step back and ever since have very rarely commented. I've only recently started commenting a bit more on the internet, and only really here on hubski.
I have a similar story. Recently I caught myself thinking "man I should find pictures of my Texan grandparents /r/oldschoolcool would love them!" Rather than wanting to find them to have pictures of my grandparents..... Karma is dangerously addictive.
Interesting. What made you originally choose to post more content? I feel like that's a situation where commenting differs from posting. Posting, you have to constantly be watching and thinking for something new to share. Commenting, it's already there to be analyzed and discussed at your leisure.
A desire for human contact? I've been at a somewhat low point in my life as of late. I started a podcast at the same time that all my plans for the following year fell apart and used that to keep myself focused on something. Promoting the show here and there lead to actually participating and starting to have conversations. I never stopped finding new stuff to share, I just either kept it to myself or only shared it on Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc. A more personal sharing than the giant bulletin board that is an internet forum.
I posted to Reddit quite a bit and got really good at it. I quit when I realized Reddit basically shaped everything about me - my views, my interests, my humor, even my friends. I also realized I wasn't being myself on Reddit and that was a problem. Now I have a secure anonymous account that I use for personal things and that's all the Reddit I do.
That's a bingo!Then one day while riding my bike over a ridge with a sunset in the distance I realized that I was thinking about what I would write on reddit instead of what was happening. I decided to take a step back and ever since have very rarely commented.
Related discussion: I personally think all roles are valuable in a community. I'm a big poster, commenter and sharer by nature. A bit gregarious.
I was thinking about this yesterday as well. I used to read newspaper's website's, but now I just go on aggregates like hubski and reddit. Every time I read something on a news website, and click a few links and find an interesting article, I don't post it because I assume someone else already has. I wonder who trolls these websites looking for breaking news to post. Especially on a site like reddit, it must be almost as soon as a big story is printed that it gets posted, is there a group of people in a perpetual race to post the big stories, or do news websites post stories themselves...?
Call me crazy, but I feel like some users may have reached out to those newspaper sites and offered to spread their content, for a fee. I think this is where the 'social media rep' job title comes from. You get paid to build following from sites like reddit, facebook, etc.
I'm much more likely to comment than post. Sometimes I wonder if it's a confidence thing. I can usually compose a comment that I think would be interesting to one or a couple people following that thread. By contrast, a post is more like an announcement. I rarely have ideas or links that I'd consider worth announcing to the world that aren't things more appropriate to post to my friends on Facebook. I don't think either is a problem - more annoying are commenters who comment solely on the title (or, even better, comment based on a failed reading of the title).
I used Fark and Digg to rack up a respectable amount of karma a few years back. I was unemployed and it was fun. I share stuff now that I hear on the news or find on not so popular subreddits, music I like and my work as an artist. I was actually banned from /r/art for extreme rudeness but it's not the most exciting story. I comment a lot but I lurk even more. I spend too much time in front of the computer.
I comment often but I rarely post. I don't really know why, maybe because I figure all of the interesting content I come across has probably already been posted. If it's something big, what are the chances I'm the first to post? Maybe it's silly though.
Like you, I comment frequently but never really post content. I think reddit ruined it for me. In all my years of posting I only had one post with more than 9 points of positive karma and it wasn't even something amazing and unique - it was pictures of my dog in the BeforeNAfterAdoption sub. Small subs were welcoming but I didn't discover this till after years of posting to the defaults and getting immediately downvoted had taken all the fun out of it for me. I guess even though I viewed them frequently I didn't realize that the defaults were so cut throat.
Reddit has its way of ruining things. I'm a fan of competitive call of duty for some reason, it's just fun to watch, so I frequent that subreddit and the sub of the team I am a fan of. As you can imagine, the sub is full of younger kids that just downvote every opinion that is different than theirs. Other than those, I sometimes comment on Askreddit but even there people are downvote happy. It just gets eh, not too fun to contribute. I am enjoying Hubski more and feel like the community is a bit different.
I commented often on Reddit, rarely posted. Now that I'm on Hubski, I find the sharing feature here is kind of like a half-post in a way, and sharing often is encouraging me to post my own stuff more. I think I may become more active in posting here than I ever was on Reddit. But hopefully I'll continue to comment at the same pace, at least.
I think people who mostly post have a very defined opinion that is probably not wont to change very easily, and so they post articles that either validate their opinions, or articles that they despise in the hopes of inciting discussion that is against said article. But that's a huge generalization, of course. Just sort of what I've noticed, though.