The IT Pro’s Guide to Reddit
To the unfamiliar, Reddit looks like an intimidating mess—a spaghettified network closet of comments, threads, karma points, and outbound links. The “front page of the Internet” does not look like a front page at all—no design hierarchy, and its content organization is downright confusing until you spend a few hours with it.
This is because Reddit has an insane amount of content and users. We are talking about over 202 million unique visitors a month, and 7.8 trillion pages to view. A lot of this is ultra-random, cat-picture type content, but there is a really strong subculture on Reddit of people who want to learn. You just have to find it.
For the IT community there are tons of great places on Reddit (subreddits, or “subs” for short) to talk shop and learn about the trade.
Now, one good thing about Reddit is that its values are pretty well spelled out. There should be nothing surprising about how you should conduct yourself on Reddit. If you are a Spiceworks user, behave in the same manner as you would on Spiceworks and you’ll be fine. There are some additional rules for sharing content and making your own posts—this Mashable video covers this sufficiently in roughly two minutes.
Now that you’re brushed up on “Redditquette” you can start exploring.
A few hours of lurking should give you a basic idea of how you should engage the boards if you so wish. Here are a few great places to start.
/r/Sysadmin
Activity level: High
Topics: IT best practices, IT culture
Content type: Mostly self-submitted discussions
Vibe: Useful, professional; at times hilarious
Archetypal threads:
- Little Things Every Domain Administrator Should Know
- What invaluable tools have you found over the years you swear by?
/r/Hardware
Activity level: Moderate
Topics: Computer hardware, consumer technology trends
Content type: Mostly outbound links to informational articles and product reviews
Vibe: Highly informed and technical
Archetypal threads:
- GlobalFoundries successfully builds AMD chips on 14-nm FinFET LPP process
- The IBM POWER8 Review: Challenging the Intel X
/r/PowerShell
Activity level: Niche
Topics: POSH best practices and tips
Content type: Self-submitted questions and discussion
Vibe: Friendly Q&A and best practices
Archetypal threads:
/r/TalesFromTechSupport
Activity level: High
Topics: Stupid user stories; network heroics; unsolvable problems solved
Content type: First person narratives
Vibe: Sarcastic and funny
Archetypal threads:
/r/IIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTT
Activity level: Low, but passionate
Topics: Frustrations of the IT industry
Content type: One-panel comics, images
Vibe: Enraged
Archetypal threads:
Redditors in IT—which are your favorite subreddits to read and engage?
