On reddit as a blogging / wiki engine:

• Any time you don't have to set things up yourself is a win.

• The built-in features, including markdown, flairs, moderation tools, RSS, and comments, are great. The more so with RES (the reddit enhancement suite browser extension(s)).

• I'd really prefer a better management of images. I use imgur for image hosting, and with RES these _tend_ to appear with content, but users not using RES get a sort of bastardized version. Since I tend to use images for conveying more information (charts, graphs, and similar data visualization) this matters.

• Post archival. I'm reaching the point where some of my earlier posts are going to get archived ("frozen") and will no longer be editable or commentable (6 months after creation). Since I'm building a reference trove and want to be able to revise content as I develop ideas (my Questions post in particular: http://redd.it/1v052g), this is a bit of a drag. I've got a secondary blog that I may rev up as this becomes an issue. I can still access the source for those to port them elsewhere, but it's still a bit of a pain.

• Post length. Turns out that for text-only subs it's 40k chars, not 10k, which was kind of nice to realize. That's around 26 pages rather than 6 per post (typewritten, 250 words/page), which should be enough even for me.

• CSS. I've clearly restyled the site a bit, and I really like being able to do that. About 98% satisfied with what I've accomplished, and a few recent fixes (such as being able to create hierarchical header and list numbering in the Wiki) are really nice.

• Post flair. It's not as complete as tags would be, though the discipline is somewhat useful. I wish it were easier to maintain, though all told it's OK.

• Draft mode: A negative. I really wish I could start to compose something and save it without publishing it. Blogging platforms offer this.

• RSS. I'm absolutely and unapologetically in love: http://redd.it/1sxfar

• Those short links aren't bad either.

• Engagement from elsewhere. After a few months I am routinely getting far more (and better) engagement than I was on G+ ("the Other Place"). Links to other subreddits (particularly popular ones) have grown engagement markedly.

• Better moderation and engagement stats. It's nice to see my traffic stats, though it would be even better to have breakouts for 1) most visited posts and 2) specific user engagement stats. I use RES's user tagging to identify useful and not-so-much people, color-tagging as well. But seeing who's really engaged and contributed would be nice.

• Ways to deal with deleted posts. I've had a couple of instances of people posting good information only to have the post later disappear. I'm aware that there are some sites which archive reddit content, but I've learned to reincorporate that content where and when possible.

• RES again: the RES post editor is fucking amazing. Side-by-side view of markdown and rendered text, in particular, full page width and height. I'll <F-11> the tab to full-screen and write without any distractions. Compare to the clusterfuck that's G+ and weep.

• File storage. I've got a few things I want to be able to post which aren't images, and sorting out how to do that is a bit of a stumper. I'm thinking

• Comments search. As noted in the FAQ, it'd be really nice to have that. Oh well. Also a wiki search -- the wiki in general is handy but not particularly full-featured. I'm curious as to why reddit went NIH on that instead of incorporating, say, MediaWiki. I may branch out my Wikiing efforts to a different platform eventually.

• Search syntax: What reddit lacks in completeness it gains in features. The ability to look for content by user, subreddit, and other elements is a huge win, and I use search a lot. The ability to key my own subreddit's search URL into my browser's reddit search keyword means I get my own styling applied to reddit site searches. Yay me!

• Community support. There's a ton of help to be had on moderation, reddit features, CSS styling, and the like. That's been great.

• Expertise. I've got a former LLNL researcher and a nuclear powerplant operator among my readers, which for my areas of interest is great.

• User voting. Sadly, abuse of up/down arrows seems to be growing on reddit. While I'm a believer in some user input on content quality rating, I'm increasingly convinced it needn't simply be open to anyone. Though it also lets me know when I'm touching on controversial topics.

• A projects board. Along with drafts, I've got a large number of writing ideas I'd like to tackle, and sorting out how to keep track of those (preferably integrated with the site) would be cool.

• Data liberation. I cap on Google a lot, but the ability to extract all of my content from the site (and having created an archive extraction tool: http://redd.it/21t7im) is actually pretty cool cheese. Reddit doesn't have a similar feature that I'm aware of, though I can iterate over posts.

I'm not sure that another tool (possibly Drupal, which everyone seems to rave about) might not address more of my needs, but on balance I'm still pretty happy with reddit.

My primary challenges now are building a relevant audience, actually creating content (I've got a half-dozen to a dozen half-written postings floating around), and the like.