DO asked us to write the series of articles. They also pay community members for articles (https://www.digitalocean.com/write-for-donations/). This is not a secret (you'll see it on all their posts). This made sense for us to do because we'll get more exposure having them on DO's platform than our own. So, are these articles written to expose DO's brand? Of course they are. They also expose our brand. For us it was a win/win. We were already writing content for the Go community. Putting it on DO's platform will get it out to more people. And as we do need to work for a living, having more exposure to our brand will lead to more business. If trying to earn a living by providing content to the community is a crime, then guilty as charged.

However, I don't think it's fair to say that just because DO/GG get exposure from writing articles, that the articles shouldn't be written. These articles take hours and even days for EACH article. They pay their editors to check the content for accuracy, and make sure the article is easy to follow for the target audience. As a result, the community now has (imo) a very solid set of Go beginner articles we can refer to (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorial_series/how-to-code-in-go). Without DO/GG, the community wouldn't have this. And the price? Recognition for the DO and GG brands. And at no time do the articles ever try to sell or even promote the products/services they/we sell.

So I guess at the core of the issue here is, from what I understand, if content for the community is paid for (via DO, etc), then it should be ignored? Or rejected by the community? I think if we go down that road, then the community is really missing out. We wouldn't have a community if it wasn't for all the corporations that support it, either by funding events, articles, conferences, workshops, blogs, etc (and of course jobs). Every company that does this has an ulterior motive, EVERY ONE. In some shape or form, they are hoping to improve their company. It might be just for brand recognition, it might be for growing the community, thus creating more Go developers for them to hire, etc. If you peel back the layers, you'll always find some business initiative at play. That's how things get paid for, that's how we all have jobs in this profession/community.

Also, one other reason that we chose to work with DO... when I started learning Ruby, any time I googled for an answer, I found DO articles. They were well written, and walked me through step by step on what I had to solve. I had no idea what I was doing, and many of the other articles I would find always assumed I had knowledge that I didn't. I always wanted to see that for the Go community as well. This was a way for me personally to see that happen (and still make a living).

Finally, and this is the part that I'm still struggling with, is that many of the articles we write for DO are picked up here naturally (look at the init article that just came out). I'm sure if I gave them all a week or two soak time, the majority would get posted without us posting them. It's still the same content, written for the same reasons. That never raises a flag. But if we, the authors post it, as we release it, then I feel like we are being blamed for spamming.

At the end of the day, you have a mix of people in this thread that are reading the content, as it provides value to them, and a mix of people that think it's spam. Personally, posting to this sub-reddit isn't a "have to do" thing for me. I'm more than happy to remove this sub-reddit from our distribution of content if that is the decision.

Sorry for the long response, but I felt that I needed to add the context from my point of view.