Exactly. You don't contribute much of value though with your zero submissions. People who only manage to criticize others while using the community resources and not contributing to those should not try to teach others who do contribute regularly. Try to find some relevant stories first to share and then tell me how you do it not before you even tried.
"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In your case it seems one year wasn't enough.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=840702
To be honest, I don't use Digg, Reddit or any other main stream social news sites and I won't due to several factors so don't tell me to go there. Also when some people like a story enough to vote for it this story must make sense to some "hackers" too.
I rather get tired of the hard core programming langauge stuff that's better suited for http://www.dzone.com/
Still, I just ignore it and don't tell others to shut up. I don't know why YOU feel entitled to me to shut up.
Btw.: Where I live hackers are the most political people around. I just say Pirate Party so I don't understand why hackers are not even allowed to discuss business and tech policies here.
Ignoring my comment on the healthcare post (which I only did because you submitted a bunch of them in a reasonably short space of time and the HN gimmick was too good to pass up), I replied to your comment to tell you why I down voted it. I wasn't the first person to post and clearly others down voted you too.
A lot of hackers care about healthcare and politics - even I do. My point was that there are a lot of other sources where these things are easy to find and they are, in my opinion, better suited to discussions on those topics for that reason. HN, from the vast majority of submissions and votes, is very tech startup oriented. A lot of people I talk to come here for that reason. From looking at comments and submissions, it seems most people do. Posting other things, like healthcare, though it may be interesting or useful to people, isn't very useful here because a) it makes the articles that most people come here for (from what I can see) harder to find (signal to noise etc) and b) its trivial to find these discussions elsewhere, so removing them from HN doesn't mean anyone loses out.
You are free to disagree; I just wanted to explain my views to you.
Thank you, very kind of you. I thought you rather assume that I am not entitled to it. Thus you try to subdue it by voting it down and telling me not to submit stuff like that. You are really very generous.
"Ignoring my comment on the healthcare post (which I only did because you submitted a bunch of them in a reasonably short space of time and the HN gimmick was too good to pass up)"
Are you some kind of weird stalker or something voting everything down of mine or on a particular topic? Get a life then. Btw. I wouldn't need to resubmit stuff when people wouldn't block it from being seen. People who like to decide what others are allowed to see should work as censors for China but stop policing democratic communities.
"the vast majority of submissions and votes, is very tech startup oriented"
Yes, indeed it is, which sometimes gets a little boring. HN is not strictly a niche topical community it deals with everything hackers might interest so please let the hackers themselves decide, here 6 of them did. I don't see a problem with the occasional non-Ruby, TechCrunch or startup article.
"You are free to disagree"
Thank you again for this generosity but it's not something you allow me to do, I have the same right to voice my opinion here as you do.
P.S.: Ever since I'm on the Web (1997) people like you always shouted "off topic". In most cases where they succeeded the places they did it on died off due to their topical limitations as the subjects evolved.
Just because people disagree does not mean they censor you. Furthermore, freedom of speech is not guaranteed on this site. Basically, you can only say stuff on pg's terms and his terms include the flagging process available to all.
6 people upvoted, more have flagged it. That's not a single person "subduing" you, that's people deciding they don't think this submission is the kind of stuff they want to see on HN. That's their right. But as a "social media power user" you knew that right? Right?
It's your business if you don't want to read news from other places. Should I be able to get Italian language celebrity gossip news here if I find a few people to vote it up? Or bike racing news?