Last night I posted my first Story to Steemit. One of a few things I struggled with as I scribbled my dumb nerd notes about cord-cutting and U.S. TV consumption was linking etiquette. My internal dialogue:
I wanna put links all over this thing, especially at the end. Sometimes as "footnote" type things, sometimes just as a way for readers to "follow up" and scroll through previous things I've written off-site. And I wanna put links back to some other profiles where I write more about this stuff.
It quickly became an internal dialogue: Is this place more like Reddit (where you have to be sensitive about links back to one's site, because it can be seen as self-promotional/spammy, or Is this place more like Medium/any blog, where putting links back to prior work/external profiles is seen as being conscientious.
If I saw somebody post something on Reddit with links all over the place to their other sites/off-Reddit creations, especially if it were one of their first posts, I'd be a little more skeptical when reading. But if I saw it on Medium/Tumblr, I'd love it.
Another reason I leaned towards Reddit-style self-consciousness- On Reddit, one's profile doesn't have space/fields for links back to other stuff you do online. On Medium, you have structured fields that link back to your Twitter/Facebook, and you have unstructured field to write a bio/link back to self-hosted sites/wherever. In this way, Steemit is more like Reddit.
Often on blog posts I end a post with something like, "If you're interested in reading more about X, check out this twitter account I maintain," etc. I stopped myself from doing that last night. Was I being too uptight? Rightfully cautious?
Would love to hear what people who've been in this community for longer than I have might think.