5 ms·

The same kind of complaint was raised against the previous post and someone posted a link to the authors tweet about that. Seems like they prefer to publish the

The same kind of complaint was raised against the previous post and someone posted a link to the authors tweet about that. Seems like they prefer to publish the content first and then do proofreading passes.

hinkley 6y ago
Something I’ve learned from my own writing is that it’s possible to copy edit a piece of text into illegibility. When I look at my stuff from the heyday of blogs, half of it is, “wow, did I really write that?” And the other half I have no idea what I was trying to say. Sometimes it’s better to just stop and publish.
- Xylakant 6y ago
  From the readers side I prefer that approach, too - I’d rather have the content available with some typos than stuck in the editing pipeline of the author. If it’d be a book or some professional publication, I’d probably have higher expectations, but for someone who has no dedicated person hunting copy mistakes - let’s cut them some slack.
  - refurb 6y ago
    The other thing I learned is you can get quite good at writing if you do enough of it. I've never been that much of a writer, but I ended up as the internal communications person at my company. Not exciting at all. I was actually dreading it. After doing it for a year, I got pretty good at it (I'd like to think). I'm able to pretty quickly throw together an email or press release that's clear (avoids BS corporate speak), concise (summarize a paragraph in one sentence) and sets the right tone (why should the reader care). Now I read others people's work (not talking about this blog post at all, I haven't read it) and subconsciously edit it my head. My takeaway? Anyone can be a good writer with enough practice.
DarthGhandi 6y ago
He's getting a lot of ripoffs copying his work verbatim, nearly all of it occurs within a few hours of being posted here. None of it has attribution, all are selling ads. Some are copying comments from the threads here and putting them down the bottom of their fake blogs also to give it some legitimacy. It's a shame when people who write high quality stuff like this for free end up treated this way by digital parasites. It's not an easy problem to solve, either you lock it up and get no exposure or you get robbed. His work will still be there years from now, the poorly proofread copies likely will be too. I made that original comment in the last thread, it was only speculation but it's an easy, low cost strategy to deal with this. Let it get popular on HN with no proofreading, it gets copied, then fix it in a week or two and keep the version more likely to stand the test of time.
- jfk13 6y ago
  > He's getting a lot of ripoffs copying his work verbatim, nearly all of it occurs within a few hours of being posted here. > None of it has attribution, all are selling ads. Unsurprising, yet sad. Some even go to the trouble of changing a couple of words, presumably trying to cover their tracks or justify some kind of claim of "authorship": "This week, we continue our ... stare upon pre-standard iron and steel manufacturing" No normal English speaker would write that. Sure enough, the original had "look at", and the thief has just substituted "stare upon" without considering whether it actually reads well in the context. If someone cared to DoS or otherwise take down that parasitical site, I'd consider it a service to humanity....
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >He's getting a lot of ripoffs copying his work verbatim As soon as his content started getting posted here it was bound to happen. If you had to pick a user base most likely to have a side gig where they run some scripts to rip off websites HN would probably be about the best fit.
- bredren 6y ago
  Indications of wholesale content theft or minor / poor quality repackaging of OC would be a handy thing to know. Perhaps have them removed from serps or display on feeds. It happens enough on HN that bad re-blogs of OC get ads thrown around them. This shouldn't be.

hinkley 6y ago

Something I’ve learned from my own writing is that it’s possible to copy edit a piece of text into illegibility. When I look at my stuff from the heyday of blogs, half of it is, “wow, did I really write that?” And the other half I have no idea what I was trying to say. Sometimes it’s better to just stop and publish.

Xylakant 6y ago
From the readers side I prefer that approach, too - I’d rather have the content available with some typos than stuck in the editing pipeline of the author. If it’d be a book or some professional publication, I’d probably have higher expectations, but for someone who has no dedicated person hunting copy mistakes - let’s cut them some slack.
- refurb 6y ago
  The other thing I learned is you can get quite good at writing if you do enough of it. I've never been that much of a writer, but I ended up as the internal communications person at my company. Not exciting at all. I was actually dreading it. After doing it for a year, I got pretty good at it (I'd like to think). I'm able to pretty quickly throw together an email or press release that's clear (avoids BS corporate speak), concise (summarize a paragraph in one sentence) and sets the right tone (why should the reader care). Now I read others people's work (not talking about this blog post at all, I haven't read it) and subconsciously edit it my head. My takeaway? Anyone can be a good writer with enough practice.

DarthGhandi 6y ago

He's getting a lot of ripoffs copying his work verbatim, nearly all of it occurs within a few hours of being posted here. None of it has attribution, all are selling ads. Some are copying comments from the threads here and putting them down the bottom of their fake blogs also to give it some legitimacy. It's a shame when people who write high quality stuff like this for free end up treated this way by digital parasites. It's not an easy problem to solve, either you lock it up and get no exposure or you get robbed. His work will still be there years from now, the poorly proofread copies likely will be too. I made that original comment in the last thread, it was only speculation but it's an easy, low cost strategy to deal with this. Let it get popular on HN with no proofreading, it gets copied, then fix it in a week or two and keep the version more likely to stand the test of time.

jfk13 6y ago
> He's getting a lot of ripoffs copying his work verbatim, nearly all of it occurs within a few hours of being posted here. > None of it has attribution, all are selling ads. Unsurprising, yet sad. Some even go to the trouble of changing a couple of words, presumably trying to cover their tracks or justify some kind of claim of "authorship": "This week, we continue our ... stare upon pre-standard iron and steel manufacturing" No normal English speaker would write that. Sure enough, the original had "look at", and the thief has just substituted "stare upon" without considering whether it actually reads well in the context. If someone cared to DoS or otherwise take down that parasitical site, I'd consider it a service to humanity....
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>He's getting a lot of ripoffs copying his work verbatim As soon as his content started getting posted here it was bound to happen. If you had to pick a user base most likely to have a side gig where they run some scripts to rip off websites HN would probably be about the best fit.
bredren 6y ago
Indications of wholesale content theft or minor / poor quality repackaging of OC would be a handy thing to know. Perhaps have them removed from serps or display on feeds. It happens enough on HN that bad re-blogs of OC get ads thrown around them. This shouldn't be.