[onion2k]

Scott talks about how devs don't do anything to be seen yet if you look at his twitter stream it's mostly just him tweeting his own posts and retweeting other "famous" developers. He, and the majority or other very visible people in the community, gatekeep the blogosphere by failing to help anyone else break in (not necessarily consciously of course; they may just never see the less famous devs posts).

Scott could be a much bigger part of the solution than he chooses to be.

[davnicwil]

I feel obliged to jump in and defend Scott here - I just don't think what you are saying is a fair summary of his behaviour.

For sure, I see him doing what you say, but I also see him regularly retweeting and responding to comments and questions from accounts with few followers, and particularly so from people from minorities within the developer community.

There are plenty of examples of people I can think of who behave in exactly the way you suggest, mainly spinning the flywheel of boosting the online presence of already famous people and not engaging much with outsiders, but Scott not only isn't one of them but perhaps one of the best examples I can think of of actively doing the opposite of that.

[briandrupieski]

I was about to try to comment this same idea to defend Scott. To further support it, I recommend anyone to look at the guests he interviews on his podcast, https://www.hanselminutes.com/. He goes out of his way to find and interview guests who are under-represented. Scott Hanselman is someone who I believe definitely does NOT gatekeep, and tries as best as he can to give people a chance to "break in".

onion2k I ask you to look again at his Twitter stream and podcast, and re-assess your evaluation of him.

[ufmace]

It seems like you're missing the point here. The "dark matter" developers aren't being prevented from being internet famous by some mean old clique of tech bloggers that won't let anyone else in. They are the ones who don't care at all about being internet famous, don't write blogs or tweets at all, and don't know or care what other people are blogging and tweeting. They just write code that solves business problems and then go home and do non-tech stuff.

This is not a problem that needs to be solved, it's just something to be aware of.

[CM30]

Yeah, there's definitely an element of unintentional gatekeeping in many communities/fields, especially given how many 'popular' or 'famous' creators only seem to mention other popular or famous creators. Often made worse by their tendency to not look for the original source of an article or news post, and to end up retweeting or sharing the aggregated version from some popular site or creator.

[ynkz]

Worse, some of these 'creators' did not actually create the software they pretend to have created.

Usually they control the conference circuit by donations and are able to de-platform people who would tell the truth.

It always pays off to look at the git history, which few people do.

[bdcravens]

For dark matter developers, there is no "gatekeeper" since there's no gate they want to cross: those developers aren't posting, and they don't value the visibility that it sounds like you do.

You should listen to Scott's podcast: he has a wide array of guests, in many diverse topics (even topics that could be seen at odds with his employer, Microsoft). Most of them are people I've never heard of. If there are gatekeepers, Scott isn't one of them.

[coldtea]

>He, and the majority or other very visible people in the community, gatekeep the blogosphere by failing to help anyone else break in

It's not his job/role to give people breaks. He's not a Hollywood impresario, he's a blogger. If people are good, they will be discovered.

[Davertron]

I don't think the point of his article is that this is a "problem" to be solved. And personally, I don't think these people owe you anything. Twitter etc. are all open platforms, there's nothing preventing your stuff from being seen by others.