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Why blog if nobody reads it?

andysblog.uk

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Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?

#211

Post by fragmede »

deadbabe wrote: post #70
n_ary wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, after a year or two, blogs become your experience logs to prove experience and credibility once the landscape is killed by GenAI slops and SEO scams. Anyone can generate a big portfolio of projects these days(be it graphics, video, software, writing etc) but blog posts from 2023 and before are proof and undeniable.

A dark pattern on your self hosted blogging website is to backdate blog posts and make yourself seem very good at predicting future trends. There is no reason why you have to write a blog over a long period of time, you could quickly pump out several blog posts and link to them to establish credibility quickly.

if you're that popular, there should be some history in archive.org or archive.is

Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?

#212

Post by Zanfa »

IMO, it breaks down into 3 main reasons.

1. The ability to be able to link to an in-depth explanation, rather than having to remake the points is convenient.

2. Documenting non-proprietary insights and learnings from commercial work with limited source access.

3. Explaining things is hard, so writing it down and reading it a few days later lets you see it from a different perspective so you can rewrite it more clearly. Hopefully, get better at writing in general over time as well.

I've had a number of topics I've been meaning to document for years, but haven't taken the time. Finished the first one just this weekend though at https://roosimaa.ee

Number one learning so far is writing takes a surprising amount of time.

Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?

#214

Post by Ferret7446 »

This seems to be an actual case of the begging the question fallacy.

Why someone writes a blog is very personal. If, and only if, you are writing a blog for lots of people to read it, then you do need to ask yourself if lots of people are reading your blog, and if not, what you're going to do about it.

There are lots of reasons why someone might keep a blog (as many posters here demonstrate), the simplest being "because they want to".

Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?

#215

Post by renegat0x0 »

Personal sites are dead because the Internet search is broken.

I personal sites could easily be found, and filtered, or sorted to provide interesting ones, then Personal sites would be booming.

That is why I created my own domains list: https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database

It contains links with properties in JSON. I can find personal things using "personal" tags. I can filter them using numerical "page_rating_votes".

Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?

#216

Post by nthingtohide »

renegat0x0 wrote: post #215

Personal sites are dead because the Internet search is broken. I personal sites could easily be found, and filtered, or sorted to provide interesting ones, then Personal sites would be booming. That is why I created my own domains list: https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database It contains links with properties in JSON. I can find personal things using "personal" tags. I can filter them using numerical "pa…

I think Google should create a walled garden of blogsearch, on the lines of Google Scholar, have some top-down verfication of good content / blogs. In the age of AI, such a product could act as a discovery mechanism for authentic human writings which could be included in training data for LLMs (uncontaminated steel even in age of AI).

Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?

#217

Post by sgt »

I started at some point with a Medium blog but then to mny surprise, I discovered later on that people weren't always able to read my blog, due to Medium changing to a paid model.

That was very disappointing, to say the least!

Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?

#218

Post by salamo »

I mainly blog for myself in the future, but in a slightly different flavor than the author mentions. If there's a complicated ML concept that I'd really like to understand, explaining it to an audience (even if that audience is myself in the future) is a great way to understand it.

That goes double for visuals, which is another reason I use a custom static site. Can't run JS on Medium. I even built out a client-side search and learned a good amount from that too.

Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?

#219

Post by ANarrativeApe »

This is a great counter argument to 'shouting into the void', as a friend of mine calls it. I do the writing, to refine my thinking and identify my cognitive dissonance, but I almost never share, and certainly not in the public domain - why shout into the void? But then again, why not? If your not compromising a patent or other monetization path, what's the problem? Ideas are worthless until executed, iterated and (in)validated. I should share more. Thank you @andysblog

Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?

#220

Post by jeppester »

The about section of my blog reads: "This is where I treat my desire to constantly talk about the things I'm making"

Surely it would be nice if someone read it, but really it would just be a bonus. It also makes it completely okay that I don't post that often.

I do also like that my linkedin profile can point to a personal website that contains something else than the profile itself.

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