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Completely, completely disagree. First, some people probably will find what you write to be somewhat useful. Second, it's the absolute best way to learn someth
by strictnein 8y ago
Completely, completely disagree.
First, some people probably will find what you write to be somewhat useful. Second, it's the absolute best way to learn something.
In your example, the problem was Google, not the myriad of people learning and writing what they learned.
- wenc 8y agoWriting is one the best ways to learn something. It doesn't follow that that writing should be published. The problem with blog tutorials is that it is democratization without meritocracy. There is no curation mechanism to bubble the good stuff to the top. Search engines rank by popularity, not quality. At least with forums and Q&A sites, there are natural feedback/reputation mechanisms to achieve some semblance of quality control. Blogs don't have that (they only have commenting, which depends on someone caring enough to comment). This results in very low signal to noise, and a tragedy of the commons situation happens. In most systems, there is a cost to high-volume low-quality content because it discourages participants. (I don't know if you remember MySpace...) You can't stop people from publishing low quality content, but if only there was a way to curate such content based on some standards (not gatekeeping... but curation). Quora tried and was successful in the early days because it started with a high quality contributor base, but that base has now been diluted and the platform no longer offers an enjoyable experience.