u/cartographer
Hi! I’m u/cartographer and coincidentally Reddit’s cartographer, which is an actual job here at Reddit! I spend my time mapping out the landscape of communities on Reddit for other teams to make awesome features for you. Venturing through the lesser known parts of Reddit is one of the best parts of the job, and most recently, that was sifting through original content.
Original content on Reddit
Recently we identified original content––AKA OC––communities, which are communities that welcome and encourage redditors to share their original content. This was one step in launching a new OC tag feature that we announced here. OC can be anything from r/earthporn to r/crossstitch to r/simulated.
How we find OC
Programmatically catching OC is a bit tricky since some subreddits only allow OC and others allow a mix. A lot of communities utilize flair to tag OC, others enforce titling rules, and for some it’s implicit because of the rules of the subreddit. We specifically looked for communities tagging or mentioning terms such as: OC, original, WIP. We also took a look at phrases such as “I made,” “I drew,” “I cooked,” and “I wrote.”
I never could have guessed the types of communities that would show up, like r/impastabuildings. While all of these are truly amazing works of art, they might not be OC.
We ended up with something to the tune of 1,600 candidates for Reddit Original Content, based on rules and definitions we created that required a certain level of overall activity and the proper ratio of original to standard content in a subreddit. The final list was around 300 subreddits averaging 660,000 subscribers in each subreddit.
Creators on Reddit
Creators on Reddit have some amazing stories, u/shittywatercolor (he graced one of the walls at RedditHQ), or Christine McConnel who got her start on Reddit and now has a show on Netflix, r/photoshopbattles, u/poem_for_your_sprog who started a movement that lives in the subreddit r/ilikthebred, DC universe fan-fiction writer u/majorparadox, and some indie game creators too. The list goes on and on.
Are you a creator?
If you’re a creator and looking to get started, we’ve got some some supportive subreddits to get criques and encouragement: r/freelance, r/futurebeats, r/singing, r/Poetry, r/fantasywriters, r/youtubers, r/gamedev.
Stay tuned for more from u/cartographer…