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If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

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Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#141

Post by Jugurtha »

d3nj4l wrote: post #56

As a minor counterpoint: I've come to dread blogs and newsletters because so many of them are written by grind culture freaks who only write faux-insightful SEO'd content as a way to build an audience to sell snake oil to. These days the only blogs I trust are the ones I see on the top of HN or lobsters, which is unfortunate because I have interests beyond tech and I find it very, very difficult to find good blogs I…

I have installed a Chrome extension to remove certain "data science" blogs from my search results because they just dominate, but allow posts from practically anyone. I'm not interested in the teachings of a data virgin on machine learning.

I have muted and blocked accounts on Twitter as well because of that: people clearly never having touched real data talking about ML projects, recommending libraries to manage lifecycle, etc. All that "audiencing" doesn't suit me, especially when it's clearly BS with no value, not even an entertainment value.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#142

Post by mawise »

aembleton wrote: post #128
habibur wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a standard API to subscribe to blogs on other sites, that will appear on our blog feed as news feed -- like how facebook or tweeter feeds work. RSS is too personal, too much outside the flow.

I don't understand how RSS is too personal. An RSS feed of a blog is usually the same for all readers of the blog.

I didn't get that comment either. I've doubled-down on RSS for this purpose in my side-project Haven[1]. Write your own private blog, share it with people who can then subscribe with personal http-basic-auth RSS links (or view it on the web), and I've recently built in (still a WIP) a feed reader so you can create your own facebook-style news feed of anything on the web or things your friends write privately on their own Haven.

[1]: https://havenweb.org

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#143

Post by orndorffgrant »

veidr wrote: post #99
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think is a need for some platform that provides blog+microblog on your domain, and that automatically forwards the content to social platforms so that you get the best of both worlds: 1 - owning your blog is too big of a barrier of entry, there is a need for a platform: look at the success at medium for tech writers, despite that we hate it. 2 - we need the return of the domain name based blog. This helps with…

I do think the ability to do phone calls is waning, though. I've made 4 phone calls this year: to a buddy, to my wife, to an old friend, and to my fax/voicemail provider (JConnect) which decided to terminate voicemail service on the phone number I've used since the 1990s. (So I may be part of the problem I am describing — that number didn't ring any device, it only accepted voice messages and faxes, which it forwarde…

You should tell your old school friend that their voicemail is full. At least with my carrier, I can only have like ~20 voicemails sitting around. I listen to every voicemail I get but my voicemail inbox filled up and I didn't realize it was full for years (there was no notification or anything). To make space I had to actively go delete voicemails. Of course, deleting them just sent them to a "deleted" folder, which I had to go clear as well.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#144

Post by kowalevski »

Torwald wrote: post #67
brabel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I use this instead of my own domain and a website hosted for free on Netlify or GitHub Pages? I can get quite a lot of views by posting my latest posts to the relevant forums (HN, Reddit, programming forums)... if there's any advantage I am not seeing, I actually do want to know.

> Why would I use this instead of my own domain and a website hosted for free on Netlify or GitHub Pages? Email subscriptions made easy enough for a non-techie audience to subscribe.

some blogs that are available on domain etc have form with email subscription (for example by using Convertkit service). i did this on my blog website.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#145

Post by WhompingWindows »

I think the internet evolved around and past blogs. They still exist, but much more entertaining forms of content, which use a lot more data and tech to host, have come to dominate. Think of the percentage internet mind-share web blogs had in 1995 vs. 2021, this seems to be mostly what folks are nostalgic for. Now there are hundreds of online news sources, hundreds of forums and games and billions of hours of video content.

The old Internet, the way it used to be, will survive in its niche, but we can't kid ourselves that 99% of people want to read technical blogs.

And even so, while I'm in that 1%, I find blogs overly simplistic, too focused on self-help, DIY, end your procrastination, here's why my chosen tool/kit/library is the best -- these are profoundly uninteresting. Every time a Paul Graham post rockets to the top of HN, I roll my eyes. Out of all the writing and profundity of the history of civilization, this is what we worship?

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#146

Post by yawnxyz »

kowalevski wrote: post #144
Torwald wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would I use this instead of my own domain and a website hosted for free on Netlify or GitHub Pages? Email subscriptions made easy enough for a non-techie audience to subscribe.

some blogs that are available on domain etc have form with email subscription (for example by using Convertkit service). i did this on my blog website.

Substack is free for the author vs. Mailchimp etc. f

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#147

Post by lonk11 »

naravara wrote: post #107
lonk11 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discovery of good sources of information such as blogs is hard. And I think the biggest problem is the lack of trust. Everyone wants to grab your attention [1]. So how do you know that others won't waste your attention? To solve this problem I am building https://linklonk.com that cultivates trust as you rate content. When you upvote a link you connect stronger to the feed that posted it (which could be a blog's feed…

I don't think trust can be reliably built with elements of gamification like this. The deal with gamification is that people learn to game it out, which erodes the kinds of sincere or honest interactions you're trying to cultivate. In the olden times blogs earned trust by cultivating a reputation. The reputation was earned by having an audience that trusted them and recommended them. Cross-linking content to other bl…

> If you want to build trust it has to work on the agents producing the content...

LinkLonk's algorithm works that way. It builds trust in sources of information (including users who rate content). And it does not and will not try to understand the individual pieces of content.

Unlike the social media feeds that are powered by black box neural networks, LinkLonk's algorithm is transparent. You know how your interactions with it will be interpreted. I hope that this transparency will help build trust in the system and in the sources of information you are connecting to.

Yes, bad actors will try to game any system to gain the attention that they don't deserve. I'm not claiming that LinkLonk is game-proof, but I think it has better feedback loops and incentives than other systems such as popularity based ranking (please don't take it as a challenge).

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#148

Post by leetcrew »

dsr_ wrote: post #136
d3nj4l wrote: post #56

As a minor counterpoint: I've come to dread blogs and newsletters because so many of them are written by grind culture freaks who only write faux-insightful SEO'd content as a way to build an audience to sell snake oil to. These days the only blogs I trust are the ones I see on the top of HN or lobsters, which is unfortunate because I have interests beyond tech and I find it very, very difficult to find good blogs I…

The way to find good blogs is to start by asking technical questions in whatever subject you are interested in. If you want to read about barbeque, you need to start with a technical question about barbeque; if you want to read about Greek history, you need a question about that. Eventually you will find somebody knowledgeable who is writing about that subject. They will in turn link to others, or comment on others,…

great advice, and I'd add that it doesn't even have to be a particularly intelligent question. I found bret devereaux's excellent blog by googling "game of thrones historical accuracy" and got far more than I expected.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#149

Post by _dwt »

varrock wrote: post #89
d3nj4l wrote: post #56

As a minor counterpoint: I've come to dread blogs and newsletters because so many of them are written by grind culture freaks who only write faux-insightful SEO'd content as a way to build an audience to sell snake oil to. These days the only blogs I trust are the ones I see on the top of HN or lobsters, which is unfortunate because I have interests beyond tech and I find it very, very difficult to find good blogs I…

I've always wanted to blog because I love to write. However, I've been very hesitant to do so because of exactly what you described: the grind culture. I've felt immense pressure to make every post academic, but I realized that the blog should be for me first and foremost. In fact, my first blog post ever is describing the purpose behind my blog and _why_ I started it. It will help keep me accountable. However — I do…

From experience, no, but your 5th-least-favorite post may somehow make it to the front page of HN over many more interesting ones, where it will be nitpicked to death by some guy who thinks the solution to the world's problems is XSLT. That can be a tad demotivating.

The content marketing / grind thing - as far as I can tell, those people are born (decanted?) that way. It's a whole other value system.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#150

Post by wly_cdgr »

Some strategies to find good blogs that have worked for me:

* Starting with university departmental websites

* Starting from records of "shop talk" industry conferences (e.g. Practice & GDC for games, as opposed to "fan service" cons like PAX)

* Looking up the people who worked on some games / products I really like (e.g. found Michael Brough's blog this way)

* Exploring GitHub and similar for interesting repos and looking up their main contributors (an interesting side observation you'll also end up making if you do this is how many of the best projects are essentially done by one person - i.e., 85%+ of the commits are theirs and they are clearly the main/sole driving force. Not really a surprise but cool to see nonetheless)

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