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Macwright.com redirects HN readers away

macwright.com

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Re: Macwright.com redirects HN readers away

#51

Post by catach »

eyeareque wrote: post #42
brightball wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in the middle of writing a series of security articles on my blog and a couple of people have told me that some of them are too long. They are long because I was trying to be thorough, but more so I was trying to make sure I pre-addressed all of the arguments I knew would come (particularly in my enterprise DMARC deployment article). I realize that what the author talks about here is part of why I do that.

I recommend posting the articles as you intended to. You’ll never make everyone happy anyway.

Very much so. Write first for yourself. Write to your own standard of quality. A borrowed standard is one never fully understood, nor knowingly achieved.

Re: Macwright.com redirects HN readers away

#52

Post by krapp »

catach wrote: post #30
mjb wrote: post #10

I agree with all of that. The defensiveness that comes with writing for HN (and Twitter) makes me a worse writer too. It's not just about being careful and precise, but about being super defensive to avoid the most uncharitable possible reading. Perhaps more unfortunately, I find that writing for academic conferences and journals makes me a worse writer too. It's different, but having to laser focus on 'selling' the…

> being super defensive to avoid the most uncharitable possible reading. Had my eyes opened recently by just how wild people can get with their inferences. Defense is impossible when you're asserting X, but also have to explicitly assert the entire universe of not-X.

> Defense is impossible when you're asserting X, but also have to explicitly assert the entire universe of not-X.

And then they either ignore you or call you a liar, because the only reason they bothered to comment was to post their manifesto against y anyway.

Re: Macwright.com redirects HN readers away

#55

Post by catach »

krapp wrote: post #52
catach wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being super defensive to avoid the most uncharitable possible reading. Had my eyes opened recently by just how wild people can get with their inferences. Defense is impossible when you're asserting X, but also have to explicitly assert the entire universe of not-X.

> Defense is impossible when you're asserting X, but also have to explicitly assert the entire universe of not-X. And then they either ignore you or call you a liar, because the only reason they bothered to comment was to post their manifesto against y anyway.

At least a bad faith signal makes it easy to bail from the discussion. Seemingly-honest, good faith confusion is somehow worse due to the obligation to clarify.

Re: Macwright.com redirects HN readers away

#56

Post by addicted »

tmpz22 wrote: post #8

Eloquently explains how I’m increasingly starting to feel about link aggregators and how they impact my own behavior

I’m not sure why I thought HN would be different. The same thing happened to /., Digg, Fark, etc.

I guess it’s just in the nature of aggregators that get really popular and allow comments.

Re: Macwright.com redirects HN readers away

#57

Post by synu »

I’ve thought about writing an extension to hide the top comment on every article because it’s often a pedantic disagreement with whatever the article is about, but not always (like in this case).

I do totally agree that the best writing comes not when you’re trying to build the ultimate defense against takedowns, but when you can express yourself more creatively.

Re: Macwright.com redirects HN readers away

#58

Post by dumpsterdiver »

brightball wrote: post #39
mjb wrote: post #10

I agree with all of that. The defensiveness that comes with writing for HN (and Twitter) makes me a worse writer too. It's not just about being careful and precise, but about being super defensive to avoid the most uncharitable possible reading. Perhaps more unfortunately, I find that writing for academic conferences and journals makes me a worse writer too. It's different, but having to laser focus on 'selling' the…

I’m in the middle of writing a series of security articles on my blog and a couple of people have told me that some of them are too long. They are long because I was trying to be thorough, but more so I was trying to make sure I pre-addressed all of the arguments I knew would come (particularly in my enterprise DMARC deployment article). I realize that what the author talks about here is part of why I do that.

Imo, as long as you organize your writing elegantly, it doesn't matter how long the final product is.

As a reader, I really appreciate the table of contents.

Maybe what your friends meant was that your piece was too long without a table of contents, from which they could jump to a place for reference, or skip it because they were already familiar with the material.

Re: Macwright.com redirects HN readers away

#59

Post by jwilber »

BeetleB wrote: post #29

I'm reminded of PG's "How To Write Usefully": > Should you explicitly forestall likely misinterpretations? Yes, if they're misinterpretations a reasonably smart and well-intentioned person might make. In fact it's sometimes better to say something slightly misleading and then add the correction than to try to get an idea right in one shot. That can be more efficient, and can also model the way such an idea would be d…

Somehow I think being compared to PG is exactly the sort HN-specific thing Tom wouldn’t be too keen on. (Not saying it’s bad, just made me chuckle).

Re: Macwright.com redirects HN readers away

#60

Post by renewiltord »

Sick dude. The commentary on this website is often kind of lame and I've found that lots of people who frequent it make the mistake of trying to pre-empt middle-brow comments. Don't do that. Write for those who get you.

Overly pedantic intentional misunderstandings pervade comments here and if you react to those by trying to defend against them you weaken yourself. Love it!

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