Live data from Hacker News

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

tttthis.com

261–270 of 335 posts

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

#261
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…

What are your interests? I know a shitload of good blocks.

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

#262
post #84
post #2

Blogs are still there. Try search engines which discourage cluttered web design to find them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28550764 and https://wiby.me/

You can also search personal websites on https://searchmysite.net/ - kind of like wiby.me, but searching whole sites rather than individual pages, a little more transparent about what is in the index (e.g. queries to list all indexed domains), and with a moderation layer.

For mobile users, I couldn't see the search form on the website until I enabled "Desktop Mode"/"Desktop site" in my mobile browser. Cool site and helpful!

(I just emailed the site about this.)

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

#264
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 don't even think a good chunk of what's at the top of HN is anything other than "SEO'd content". The quality is definitely diminishing in recent months.

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

#265
post #83
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…

> 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…

Pretty sure there's an xkcd for this.

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

#266
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Discussion groups and forums used to be useful, but now they're dying out and being replaced by undiscoverable walled garden facebook groups and discord servers...

Big forums can cost a lot of money to run and managing the spam can be a mess these days. Not only that the boards that have enough proper tools to deal with the spam aren't free. Sure there are plugins for some forum software that fix a few things, but often you have to install 6 plugins and that still isnt enough, plus then you have to do updates and hope it doesnt break those un-official plugins.

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

#267
Like every service in the history the Internet, blogs were great for the first few years, then got ruined by the uncontrolled nature of the medium, which is why we liked the Internet in the first place. Yes, I know, nothing new and lovely is being invented now, it was all great before, but honestly is it worth pining for a web page that took five minutes to read and was discovered by link trees rather than a tweet you read in 5 seconds that is discovered for you by a crappy algorithm?

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

#268
post #25

Yeah blogs are still here, BUT: (like email ( sob ) and telephone-calling (hooray)) a lot of people that once did blog don't anymore. Not in the "I had kids so my blog went dark for a few years" sense, but in the sense of "ooh twitter was invented and now I just emit a halfassed one-sentence brainfart or 5-second tiktok cellphone video and get way more dopamine hits". I've been reading blogs and perusing my self-cura…

I’d agree but from a different perspective. I never used RSS and didn’t care about following any particular blogger. However, blogs were a constant top hits for successfully getting answers/info on things I was searching for. I would see the same blog as my search on a topic expanded. Eg, I recall learning rails back around v0.7 and there was not many docs around and only a few bloggers. I didn’t care about the rest of their blogs, but when I saw theirblog.com in my search results, I knew they had authority on the matter.

The platform effect means there’s just less quality content and it’s more difficult to surface.

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

#269
I too hearken for access to the Internet of ole.

When content was real content, and love was poured into every keystroke.

I spend the occasional free mental cycle pondering the reasons for the downfall of Internet quality. It's hard to put a finger on any one exact reason.

The tttthis.com article reminds us that blogging platforms which lowered the barrier to entry for Internet publishing helped usher in all sorts new interesting voices and ideas.

Perhaps it was the monetization of blogs which attracted the publishers of low quality. Once gold is found in the hills, more people come exploring.

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

#270
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Discussion groups and forums used to be useful, but now they're dying out and being replaced by undiscoverable walled garden facebook groups and discord servers...

The Internet is a dark forest. As soon as there is money to be made or power to be gained by exploiting something, the barbarian hordes will burn it to the ground unless it's behind towers and walls.
Post reply on HN