Some notes on influenceering • Hacker News Board

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#61

Post by hirenj » Wed, Jun 05, 2024, 6:09 AM UTC

luu wrote: post #8

> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…

I actually am beginning to worry about this from a scientific publishing point of view. Yeah I know there’s editorial board meetings where articles are discussed for publication, but given that the content is being pushed out increasingly through algorithmic channels (google scholar, social media, pubmed search, researchsquare), I have to wonder how much choices are made to optimise for the channels. What are the metrics editorial decisions are measured by? Does channel performance factor in?

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#62

Post by brabel » Wed, Jun 05, 2024, 6:19 AM UTC

hirenj wrote: post #61

luu wrote: post #8

> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…

I actually am beginning to worry about this from a scientific publishing point of view. Yeah I know there’s editorial board meetings where articles are discussed for publication, but given that the content is being pushed out increasingly through algorithmic channels (google scholar, social media, pubmed search, researchsquare), I have to wonder how much choices are made to optimise for the channels. What are the met…

Scientists appear to optimise for citations because that's how they're "measured" against others. The quality and innovation of the research almost doesn't matter if it won't get citations, so you must publish something around what other people are working on, not on what you believe there's more chances of progress. To get citations, you also need to "play SEO" on those research search engines, of course (which is why every research paper uses as many buzzwords as they can fit in it), or make sure you have mutual agreements with "friends" to cite each other in every possible publication. Most heads of departments require everyone to cite their work on everything they publish. It's a wonder that with such a idiotic system (ironically coming from our brightest educational institutions) science still manages to make any progress at all.

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#63

Post by t0bia_s » Wed, Jun 05, 2024, 6:29 AM UTC

- Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media.

That is mine experience as well. Projects I've spent half year working on is barely noticed, while almost meme content is spreading quite fast. Thats why internet trends are driven by entertainment, not sharing a knowledge or making art in first place.

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#64

Post by lawrenceyan » Wed, Jun 05, 2024, 6:33 AM UTC

brabel wrote: post #62

hirenj wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually am beginning to worry about this from a scientific publishing point of view. Yeah I know there’s editorial board meetings where articles are discussed for publication, but given that the content is being pushed out increasingly through algorithmic channels (google scholar, social media, pubmed search, researchsquare), I have to wonder how much choices are made to optimise for the channels. What are the met…

Scientists appear to optimise for citations because that's how they're "measured" against others. The quality and innovation of the research almost doesn't matter if it won't get citations, so you must publish something around what other people are working on, not on what you believe there's more chances of progress. To get citations, you also need to "play SEO" on those research search engines, of course (which is w…

I think it was probably the best you could do before the Internet.

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#65

Post by huijzer » Wed, Jun 05, 2024, 6:41 AM UTC

t0bia_s wrote: post #63

- Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. That is mine experience as well. Projects I've spent half year working on is barely noticed, while almost meme content is spreading quite fast. Thats why internet trends are driven by entertainment, not sharing a knowledge or making art in first place.

Same if you compare Linus Torvalds income with that of a famous singer or football player.

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#66

Post by ZephyrBlu » Wed, Jun 05, 2024, 7:25 AM UTC

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 wrote: post #42

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience on the internet suggests that high-signal information usually has very low memetic fitness. All the good sources of information I've found have been buried away and I've come across them serendipitously. Not particularly surprising though, entertainment is the lowest common denominator so it's much easier for that kind of stuff to spread. High-signal information is the complete opposite: very few people…

any high-signal sources in particular?

This is a tech-focused selection from my personal list, with a few more business-y sources thrown in:

- https://erikbern.com

- https://lethain.com

- https://commoncog.com

- https://scattered-thoughts.net

- https://danluu.com

- https://ideolalia.com

- https://staysaasy.com

- https://collabfund.com

- https://blog.nelhage.com

- https://jacobian.org

- https://equalventures.substack.com

- https://defmacro.org

- https://spakhm.com

- https://apenwarr.ca

- https://scarletink.com

- https://benkuhn.net

- https://cpojer.net

- https://brandur.org

- https://zeptonaut.com

Let me know if you want some reading recommendations for any of these!

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#67

Post by _xiaz » Wed, Jun 05, 2024, 7:49 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #32

> #1: It’s still a chore just use a static site if you can. I think I’m also stuck with an old stack and don’t have the time to move to a static site and I’ve been paying the price for years. All my new stuff is static, pushed on github, deployed by cloudflare pages. Worst was when a linux upgrade deleted a bunch of user content, fortunately I had set up backups! But spent the entire night fixing things. Now I do sta…

Any reason in particular for going with cloudflare pages instead of github pages? The latter has served me well for years, but I'm wondering if I'm missing out

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#68

Post by _xiaz » Wed, Jun 05, 2024, 7:51 AM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #18

but otherwise, it’s OK to write about what excites you, and to do it as you learn.” yeah, but what if no one else cares what you write about or it does not gain traction

[dead]

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#69

Post by xboxnolifes » Wed, Jun 05, 2024, 8:08 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #59

luu wrote: post #8

> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…

I think the dichotomy here is a false one. There is plenty of well-researched, in-depth content that does well on social media. The trick is that it’s also presented in an accessible way that provides value at every step, even the “superficial glance” one. The mistake many of the “I spent hours researching this piece” creators is that they don’t package that content in an accessible way. Instead it’s a huge block of…

> The mistake many of the “I spent hours researching this piece” creators is that they don’t package that content in an accessible way. Instead it’s a huge block of text without any coherent organization or entry point. Ergo it’s not surprising that it does worse.

It's like a lot of open source software. Tons of high quality effort put together to make great things, but very little time put toward packaging it to be appealing to the masses. Which is fine if you're okay with that, just don't be surprised when the average person isn't setting up a toolchain to compile your project from source or not editing config files to changes settings that aren't accessible in-program.

It's possible hour+ blog posts don't have much of a market, but I know super in-depth, informative, hour+ videos have some form of a market. At the very least Summoning Salt does something right in their videos to get millions of people to watch hour long historical video game videos.

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#70

Post by miki123211 » Wed, Jun 05, 2024, 8:17 AM UTC

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 wrote: post #42

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience on the internet suggests that high-signal information usually has very low memetic fitness. All the good sources of information I've found have been buried away and I've come across them serendipitously. Not particularly surprising though, entertainment is the lowest common denominator so it's much easier for that kind of stuff to spread. High-signal information is the complete opposite: very few people…

any high-signal sources in particular?

Anything that comes from an academic (.edu / .ac.uk / your local equivalent) domain, Youtube channels of academic institutions (the less professionally recorded the video, the better), the Wikipedia references for a particular topic.