I blog about really niche local history. I enjoy it because it acts as external motivation for my hobby. The idea that someone could read it makes me research thoroughly and write as well as I can. I don't mind if nobody reads it. I get a few hits but I assume that's people training LLMs.
Why blog if nobody reads it?
251–260 of 373 posts
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#252I was chatting about a related topic with my wife today. The premise was that there are many technology related blogs and not enough blogs about obscure topics (e.g., chocolate, woodworking). People interested in those obscure topics struggle to find genuine information because very few people are writing about them, much less making any content about them. I think most of us in the technology field tend to forget ju…
There's a lot of Tiktok accounts for woodworking, but, yeah, unsure how persistent or informative those may be.
And also how searchable it is. The great thing with blogs for me is that I can relatively quickly skip to the part where the information is that I want, because usually I don't need all of it.
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#253I document technical things on my blog and hardly anyone reads it. But later on when I need that thing again, I just go there and I have the perfect documentation available for the topic (it's perfect since I wrote it hahaha).
I used to do that, now I just keep a OneNote with the things that would have been blog entries once upon a time - it's available across all my devices and I can export it to PDF when I do need to share something with someone - and I don't have to worry about someone defacing or hacking the site hosting it.
I used to do that. Use OneNote. And then I discovered that OneNote really sucks when it comes to 1. Syncing across devices. 2. Large documents
I searched high and low and found Obsidian. Now the idea of using OneNote sends shivers down my spine.
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
I regularly have conversations with people that end up with some form of "Let's not belabor this over beers but I'll send you a link to something I wrote. It may be a little bit stale but let me know what you think and we can follow up." Blogging has internal benefits of organizing thoughts or even just being a fun hobby. But it's external validation as well. Sure, writing a book is even more but that's probably 100s…
> "Let's not belabor this over beers but I'll send you a link to something I wrote. It may be a little bit stale but let me know what you think and we can follow up." How is it being received by those people? I can't help but imagine the response being: "Okay but then what's the point of us sitting here with beers?" EDIT: If I was hanging out talking with someone, and have them terminate an interesting conversation t…
Yeah I agree, someone saying they don't want to talk anymore because they've already written about something stops it being a discussion and makes it into some sort of lecture but without the notes. If you're insisting on telling someone you wrote about the current topic of conversation, you can just mention it and carry on with it. Like authors who go on podcasts, they'll say "Like I wrote in chapter X, I think that..." - the conversation shouldn't be killed off. Comes off as a bit arrogant.
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#255I've been wanting to blog, but I never do it. One of the reasons (excuses) is that I don't know where to blog. Is it better to host your own page, use some newsletter service such as substack, or just open a blog in any blogging plaform?
I think the best thing is to just start. As you're not blogging, there is no one that knows what you need, you probably don't even know. But after you have started with whatever is easiest right now you might discover the things that you want from your blogging tool. Maybe you're happy, maybe you'll play around a bit.
One very important thing for me is to stop the tool from distracting myself from writing. I write simple markdown files that I then publish, there is nothing that I need to do that distracts me from writing (I still get distracted, but at least not by my blog). The writing is the main task, the publishing and everything around is tiny, so I can focus on what I want to do with my blog. Write.
(Just to get back to the point, choose whatever is easy to set up and easy to maintain and if you realize that the tool is not right for you just change it. (This of course works best when you use your own domain))
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
We need better timestamping services for this. I tried to write out an initial spec here, but I haven’t been able to write any implementations yet: https://github.com/sebmellen/proof-of-origination .
> We need better timestamping services for this.
If I were to write a dozen blog posts today, and then straight up dump them on my blog, dating each of them so they're spaced roughly evenly since Jan 2021 to today, and start each of them with a preamble saying "I wrote this in my journal around [backdated timestmap]; publishing it now ([real timestamp]) as part of my 2025 blog revival commitment" - what would you say then? This little preamble explains both the sudden appearance and lack of any prior traces on the Internet corresponding to claimed creation dates. Are you going to call me a liar?
No, if someone with even half a brain wants to fake expertise this way, you won't be able to tell. If anything, what will give them away is anachronisms in text. Like idk. an off-hand remark about ChatGPT in a post dated 2021 could make you wonder.
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#257Personal 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…
It's not possible for search engine to find blogs after 2000. Twitter, HN, and even other social networking sites is better.
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#258Many small actions over a large amount of time does establish a body of work and (some) credibility
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#259I blog because once a post of mine made the front page of HN and you guys crashed my VPS with traffic for 2 days straight - including my work site hosted on the same server. I will cherish that moment of excitement and terror for the rest of my days
Free DDoS red-teaming! <3
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#260Personal 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…
> Personal sites are dead because the Internet search is broken.
Personal sites are not dead. I've got one, and it is entirely fulfilling its function. Other people have them too.
Internet search is pretty broken, I'll agree with you. That said, Kagi and Marginalia both seem to tackle the problems with surfacing old and/or independent content. And people are bypassing the search-engines by constructing link pages, link blogs and web-rings, and seem to be doing fine.