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Why I Keep a Research Blog

gregorygundersen.com

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Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#61

Post by kingsara »

_fbpt wrote: post #7
kingsara wrote: post #6

Great article and very concise. I've found myself and my writing "addiction" represented. There are many concepts I couldn't grasps until I tried to put them to paper. On a different note: does anyone happen to know if that's a standard Wordpress theme? I've been looking to find a simple theme and this (or something similarly minimalist and text-focused) would be perfect for my needs.

This seems to be a static site generator. http://gregorygundersen.com/blog/2020/01/12/why-research-blo... has a HTTP header last updated on 01/13/2020 04:34:31. http://gregorygundersen.com/blog/2019/12/23/random-fourier-f... is 01/13/2020 04:34:30, or 1 second earlier. Also the source code has a link to http://gregorygundersen.com/css/markdown.css which 404's.

Of course, I could have just checked myself. Highly appreciated!

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#62

Post by kingsara »

raamdev wrote: post #22
kingsara wrote: post #6

Great article and very concise. I've found myself and my writing "addiction" represented. There are many concepts I couldn't grasps until I tried to put them to paper. On a different note: does anyone happen to know if that's a standard Wordpress theme? I've been looking to find a simple theme and this (or something similarly minimalist and text-focused) would be perfect for my needs.

I built a WordPress theme called Independent Publisher that’s intended to focus on the writing and get out of the way of the reader. I was reminded of it while reading this blog, so it may be of interest to you. It’s open-source and maintained by the community on GitHub—suggestions and feedback are always welcome: https://independentpublisher.me/

Very cool, thank you. I will try it out.

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#63

Post by kingsara »

raju wrote: post #21
kingsara wrote: post #6

Great article and very concise. I've found myself and my writing "addiction" represented. There are many concepts I couldn't grasps until I tried to put them to paper. On a different note: does anyone happen to know if that's a standard Wordpress theme? I've been looking to find a simple theme and this (or something similarly minimalist and text-focused) would be perfect for my needs.

> On a different note: does anyone happen to know if that's a standard Wordpress theme? Not sure if it was this comment that prompted it, but I was looking for the same and noticed he pushed an empty repo about an hour ago on Github — https://github.com/gwgundersen/blog-theme

Hah, coincidence or inspiration? We'll never know (perhaps we'll know if we ask). Anyways, thank you!

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#64

Post by aliceryhl »

tombert wrote: post #31
aliceryhl wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should probably quit.

You're probably right, but these kinds of insane, all-encompassing non-compete clauses are pretty common in most large corporations (at least in my understanding), and if I were to leave I'd be sacrificing all my stock grants and the like. There's no point in me quitting if I don't think I can get something better. I could of course go to a startup or something, but I have a wife in school and a mortgage to pay. I do…

There may be many that have non-competes, but I think you will find that many of them would allow blogging (or at least be willing to make an exception). Stopping engineers from blogging is typically not the reason they have the non-compete.

Alternatively you could try to convince your employer to add an exception to the non-compete. It's not unthinkable that they would allow it, if it's just for blogging.

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#65

Post by tombert »

aliceryhl wrote: post #64
tombert wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably right, but these kinds of insane, all-encompassing non-compete clauses are pretty common in most large corporations (at least in my understanding), and if I were to leave I'd be sacrificing all my stock grants and the like. There's no point in me quitting if I don't think I can get something better. I could of course go to a startup or something, but I have a wife in school and a mortgage to pay. I do…

There may be many that have non-competes, but I think you will find that many of them would allow blogging (or at least be willing to make an exception). Stopping engineers from blogging is typically not the reason they have the non-compete. Alternatively you could try to convince your employer to add an exception to the non-compete. It's not unthinkable that they would allow it, if it's just for blogging.

They make it pretty clear that I need to get approval to do anything code-related outside of work. I had to go through a ton of forms to get permission to teach coding at a public library here.

That said, you're not wrong; I probably could harass someone to be allowed to blog, but after being declined twice from contributing to open source (both taking around 4-5 hours of talking to legal teams and managers), I'm just a bit burnt out from the experiences.

I should probably find another job once a bit more stock vests.

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#66

Post by loceng »

kortilla wrote: post #60
loceng wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest one would simply be removing the down vote mechanism. If with an existing site then can compare with the years' prior stats - assuming they've been recorded; I don't know if HN does. There are a number of things you could monitor - would be interesting to see if any sets of people with the same behaviour change their behaviour more than just down voting, like if they stay on the site more or less, if they…

No downvotes == youtube. People as a whole are too fucking immature and stupid to work in this kind of system because there is no negative feedback for extremism (one-sided views without nuance). People knee-jerk upvote just as much as they knee-jerk downvote and eliminating one half of the knee-jerks has nasty side effects.

That's a good point regarding people knee-jerk upvoting too. I wonder if A/B testing to see whether there's a difference if weighting upvotes higher from people who comment more and probably taking comment length into account - and perhaps factoring in the upvotes of their comments to the weight of their upvotes.

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#67

Post by archontes »

aneesh297 wrote: post #45
loceng wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest one would simply be removing the down vote mechanism. If with an existing site then can compare with the years' prior stats - assuming they've been recorded; I don't know if HN does. There are a number of things you could monitor - would be interesting to see if any sets of people with the same behaviour change their behaviour more than just down voting, like if they stay on the site more or less, if they…

So like Facebook or YouTube comments (downvotes on YouTube don't really do anything) ?

I think his point might be that a YouTube downvote really does do something; it creates in the downvoter an emotion that the point has been addressed and can be discarded without further thought.

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#68

Post by Darkphibre »

vidarh wrote: post #58
Darkphibre wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not op, but one idea: Ask for an articulate reason for downvoting. Increases the barrier of downvotes, and if people don't feel that it's articulate they could then downvote the downvote (with their reasons why). Frequently downvoted reasons could be added to a blacklist that requires additional elucidation before being able to submit the downvote. This has been an interesting thought experiment. I'd expect the resul…

Slashdot has (had? Haven't used Slashdot for years) a reason for up/downvotes, coupled with meta-moderation where you would occasionally be asked to moderate someone elses choice of moderation. Don't remember how well it worked.

Heck yeah! I had a five digit slashdot account and ICQ accounts. Those were the days. :)

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#70

Post by rewq4321 »

aneesh297 wrote: post #45
loceng wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest one would simply be removing the down vote mechanism. If with an existing site then can compare with the years' prior stats - assuming they've been recorded; I don't know if HN does. There are a number of things you could monitor - would be interesting to see if any sets of people with the same behaviour change their behaviour more than just down voting, like if they stay on the site more or less, if they…

So like Facebook or YouTube comments (downvotes on YouTube don't really do anything) ?

Do you have evidence for this? It doesn't change the publicly displayed number, but I was under the impression that it does change the ordering. That did seem to be the case last time I experimented with this. On a video with only a dozen or so comments I downvoted a comment with no upvotes, and then opened the video page in an incognito tab, and the comment I downvoted was right at the bottom. Could have been a coincidence, but the probability of that seemed low at the time.
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