That is not such a terrible outcome, but neither is it an especially good outcome. The quality of my e-mails and public speaking is, in my view, nowhere near that of my novels. So for me it comes down to the following choice: I can distribute material of bad-to-mediocre quality to a small number of people, or I can distribute material of higher quality to more people. But I can’t do both; the first one obliterates the second.
>Publish pretty much everything you write because you can’t predict what is going to be popular. There is a lower bar for quality, but barring dishonesty and literally unreadable prose, everything else should go out somewhere.
Extremely reckless advice, so many people have lost their jobs, friends, and livelihoods due to publishing the 'wrong' thing on facebook. And the definition of 'wrong' is ever-changing. Bottom line is you need to consider the downside tail risk if you want the upside tail risk, this post baits you with the latter.
There is always an emotional motivation behind what people say and write.
The whole article sounds like humblebrag. OP is fishing for attention and trying to make himself famous for being famous... To top it off, he uses his position as a prominent Facebook employee to get extra leverage. It doesn't get any more self-indulgent than that. Not to mention the part where OP essentially brags about how humble he is (quoting other people of course; very subtle).
It's as though having everyone know how awesome you are at everything isn't enough... You also need everyone to know that you are also awesome at being humble about how awesome you are.
However, if the whole article is meant to be social satire then I think it's really clever...
So the opposite of a bad idea is not always a good idea.
Some things should be published. Some whistles need to be blown, some problems need to be brought to attention, people need to be held accountable, etc.
Those sound exactly like the public good's "have to" topics.
Personal details are the opposite. I share anecdotes with coworkers, and even those are completely sanitized unless they are specific enough to involve individuals. It's automatic redaction, I rarely even realize I'm doing it.
Yeah, that was my first thought. I'm very careful what opinions I share, even when I'm relatively anonymous. Early 21st century American isn't the time or place for the free and open exchange of ideas.
Consider a rephrasing: don't hold back on publishing unfinished thoughts relating to programming/IT because you fear they aren't of sufficient quality, because it may turn out that people find more value in it than you realize.
I don't think it's talking about politics or religion, unless you're a political or religious expert. Note that this has been what kept me from getting my thoughts out on blog myself, so I think it's an important lesson that I'm going to try and take.
And if you're going to publish something, for heck's sake don't publish it on facebook.com. It's a terrible platform for content. To even read this article, I had to sign into facebook, deny a prompt to provide alerts, close 4 messenger windows, etc. etc. Not a good way to read.
> To even read this article, I had to sign into facebook, deny a prompt to provide alerts, close 4 messenger windows, etc. etc. Not a good way to read.
Is it on mobile? I opened on Chrome browser it doesn't require you to sign in at all to see the article. There was a "Join or log into facebook" in the top right, but you don't have to do it to read the article. I was actually surprised to see something looking like a Medium article, as I was expecting some regular of public FB post.
The only negative experience is I wish the font was fully #000000 black color. It's pretty dark already but I don't like it on my monitor.
While to convince most of the people to jump off Facebook doesn't look very promising, Facebook-to-RSS gate as a service might be nice thing to have indeed.
The attention merchants soliciting as much free content as you can produce so they can exploit it.
The emails we get saying what is recently posted on FB and how you are missing out by not participating. It's all increasingly naked and greed driven...and quickly destroying brand allegiance and credibility...
The missing caveat form the title would be: IF and only if your goal in writing is to get your words in front of as many eyes as possible.
I write as an exercise to clarify my thinking and organize thoughts, and much of my writing is thereby naive and off-target because my thoughts aren't yet fully baked. I would not want something accidentally blowing up and getting 300K views unexpectedly. That simply isn't what my writing is for.
There can be value in half-baked writing. Blog posts by people stumbling to learn stuff can be really encouraging to people suffering from Imposter Syndrome.
At worst, someone wastes 4 minutes and discovers you're imperfect.
This just sounds like Facebook begging for more content so it can profile more people.
"You just published a blog post on cats? We didn't know you like cats! Here's 15 ads about cats. And we sold your name to a mail-order cats-for-sex company. But that's OK because you agreed to that by clicking on something at one time years ago. Or maybe it was when you visited a 'partner' site and didn't click on anything at all. Still, it's all cool because we're 'friends' and you 'like' us!"
Not sure how closely you read the article, but it's a personal post talking about tweet engagement. It doesn't even mention Facebook nor is it an official Facebook post.
Most comments are already contrary to the article, but to add to the sentiment, my English professor memorably said, "Free writing is like going to the bathroom. Very important, but you don't need to show the results to the world" (I think his wording was more eloquent, but the theme is correct).
This needs to be read with the mindset that it's for people who've decided to publish opinions, and care about having more people read them.
There are lots of reasons you might not want to do that: you're the kind of person who picks stupid fights[0], your opinions are deeply hated by most people, etc.
For the people it's aimed at, I think it's close to being right. For many others, writing is a tangential part of what they do, and they ought to be a lot more careful. But that probably also means giving up on having a lot of people read their opinions. You can't spread your ideas with one hand tied behind your back.
[0] Not being judgmental here...I've picked too many stupid fights in my time.
There is nothing wrong with publishing your opinion. There is nothing wrong in engaging in reasoned, responsible discussion. There is nothing wrong in displaying passion towards a chosen point of view. You'll notice that I have very, very carefully chosen my words. I could probably continue in this vein for ages and not impress anyone.
I'm not sure where the balance is but I find discourse on HN tending towards saccharine with some excellent but infrequent counter examples.
wrt: [0] - I think that sometimes you have to be seen to tilt at windmills but you should choose your windmills carefully. Actually, you'd be surprised how effective a well chosen jab from a lance might be at the sweeps (think branch in the spokes of a wheel). Perhaps someone should have told that Spanish bloke or have I completely knackered this analogy?
"Pollute everybody's attention as much as you can, since occasionally you might say something useful"
It's the ego-centered approach to publishing, maximizing your returns, at a large cost to the commons. (If everybody follows that advice, the Internet will be a smouldering garbage heap. Wait, they do, and it is)
I'd much rather all of us focused on publishing something that has an actual chance of being useful. Be picky. Respect other people's time and attention.
And as a reader, choose authors that have proven to respect your time. (Or, alternatively, have others pre-filter the garbage stream for the jewels)
I really REALLY hope people will take the opposite approach. Publish well thought out, well edited, original pieces. Take your time and reflect. Quality over quantity.
And this way of thinking makes the world fill up with garbage. I'm doing the opposite: I never publish anything unless I'm proud of it and I can defend it as being of good quality. The world doesn't need another useless piece of anything.
43 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] threadThat is not such a terrible outcome, but neither is it an especially good outcome. The quality of my e-mails and public speaking is, in my view, nowhere near that of my novels. So for me it comes down to the following choice: I can distribute material of bad-to-mediocre quality to a small number of people, or I can distribute material of higher quality to more people. But I can’t do both; the first one obliterates the second.
https://www.nealstephenson.com/why-i-am-a-bad-correspondent....
(pardon the utterly horrible formatting)
Extremely reckless advice, so many people have lost their jobs, friends, and livelihoods due to publishing the 'wrong' thing on facebook. And the definition of 'wrong' is ever-changing. Bottom line is you need to consider the downside tail risk if you want the upside tail risk, this post baits you with the latter.
If your job, friends, or livelihood is at stake, I'd say either all of those, or your content, needs to be evaluated, and not for spelling errors.
> And the definition of 'wrong' is ever-changing.
It seems like some people have a lot more trouble with this than it really warrants.
The whole article sounds like humblebrag. OP is fishing for attention and trying to make himself famous for being famous... To top it off, he uses his position as a prominent Facebook employee to get extra leverage. It doesn't get any more self-indulgent than that. Not to mention the part where OP essentially brags about how humble he is (quoting other people of course; very subtle).
It's as though having everyone know how awesome you are at everything isn't enough... You also need everyone to know that you are also awesome at being humble about how awesome you are.
However, if the whole article is meant to be social satire then I think it's really clever...
Some things should be published. Some whistles need to be blown, some problems need to be brought to attention, people need to be held accountable, etc.
Personal details are the opposite. I share anecdotes with coworkers, and even those are completely sanitized unless they are specific enough to involve individuals. It's automatic redaction, I rarely even realize I'm doing it.
I don't think it's talking about politics or religion, unless you're a political or religious expert. Note that this has been what kept me from getting my thoughts out on blog myself, so I think it's an important lesson that I'm going to try and take.
Is it on mobile? I opened on Chrome browser it doesn't require you to sign in at all to see the article. There was a "Join or log into facebook" in the top right, but you don't have to do it to read the article. I was actually surprised to see something looking like a Medium article, as I was expecting some regular of public FB post.
The only negative experience is I wish the font was fully #000000 black color. It's pretty dark already but I don't like it on my monitor.
I write as an exercise to clarify my thinking and organize thoughts, and much of my writing is thereby naive and off-target because my thoughts aren't yet fully baked. I would not want something accidentally blowing up and getting 300K views unexpectedly. That simply isn't what my writing is for.
At worst, someone wastes 4 minutes and discovers you're imperfect.
"You just published a blog post on cats? We didn't know you like cats! Here's 15 ads about cats. And we sold your name to a mail-order cats-for-sex company. But that's OK because you agreed to that by clicking on something at one time years ago. Or maybe it was when you visited a 'partner' site and didn't click on anything at all. Still, it's all cool because we're 'friends' and you 'like' us!"
Is Facebook pushing this?
Kent Beck seems to make a lot of FB notes and this isn't anything new. https://www.facebook.com/kentlbeck/notes?lst=1511963732%3A61...
There are lots of reasons you might not want to do that: you're the kind of person who picks stupid fights[0], your opinions are deeply hated by most people, etc.
For the people it's aimed at, I think it's close to being right. For many others, writing is a tangential part of what they do, and they ought to be a lot more careful. But that probably also means giving up on having a lot of people read their opinions. You can't spread your ideas with one hand tied behind your back.
[0] Not being judgmental here...I've picked too many stupid fights in my time.
I'm not sure where the balance is but I find discourse on HN tending towards saccharine with some excellent but infrequent counter examples.
wrt: [0] - I think that sometimes you have to be seen to tilt at windmills but you should choose your windmills carefully. Actually, you'd be surprised how effective a well chosen jab from a lance might be at the sweeps (think branch in the spokes of a wheel). Perhaps someone should have told that Spanish bloke or have I completely knackered this analogy?
Don't especially publish it on a walled garden like Facebook.
It's the ego-centered approach to publishing, maximizing your returns, at a large cost to the commons. (If everybody follows that advice, the Internet will be a smouldering garbage heap. Wait, they do, and it is)
I'd much rather all of us focused on publishing something that has an actual chance of being useful. Be picky. Respect other people's time and attention.
And as a reader, choose authors that have proven to respect your time. (Or, alternatively, have others pre-filter the garbage stream for the jewels)
At this point I would even prefer medium.
Instead, publish what you believe is solid, worth the effort to read, and has lasting value ... for at least a small audience.
You have to be the jaded editor missing from the loop. There's plenty of verbal clutter in the world.