Why I Keep a Research Blog • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#71

Post by loceng » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

rytill wrote: post #56

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…

You’ve got an old and wise account, but for me, hacker news is a place I can’t downvote.

Upvoted you to counter whoever downvoted you. Do you mind explaining why HN is somewhere you can't or won't downvote but other places you will?

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#72

Post by rytill » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

loceng wrote: post #71

rytill wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve got an old and wise account, but for me, hacker news is a place I can’t downvote.

Upvoted you to counter whoever downvoted you. Do you mind explaining why HN is somewhere you can't or won't downvote but other places you will?

My account can’t downvote on HN.

Some people say it gets unlocked after 500 karma, others say they can do it before then which makes me think a mod can activate it for an account.

It was ironic and surprising to see all these high karma accounts discuss a theoretical forum where users can’t downvote without discussing HN’s existing rules.

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#73

Post by AbitofAsum » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:18 PM UTC

I deeply appreciate the main concept here, and I've tried several ways to get the benefits of writing.

I have two hangups, one makes blogging hard, and one makes keeping an organized notebook hard. If anyone has some thoughts/philosophy about it, I'm very much interested.

The first hangup for blogging is that I find it very difficult to choose a 'technical background cutoff'. I very much like ELI5 attitudes but the issue (that everyone has to deal with) is choosing which topics not to explore. It's difficult not to wander off on tangent "pre-req" topics not only because I want clear explanations, but also because of my second hangup. I tend to "overthink" things and when you question deeply enough, you always wind up at something too difficult to figure out in a day/week/month. Repeating that 10x times per 'blog post' just doesn't work.

One possible work around that I've gleaned from this discussion is to have blog posts presented as WIPs, and work on them progressively almost like a notebook.

If anyone else has some thoughts on how I might handle these things, I'd very much appreciate it.