Thanks for taking the time to write up balanced feedback! I was surprised.
I’m starting to understand the message from your and other comments that the tone of the article is distracting from the content and even causing people to misunderstand it. When I write another article, I will take more time to work on the tone.
I knew that the introduction is written in a choppy way, but I didn’t expect that it would be hard to read. Thanks for telling me that. Good point also that I should introduce key terms more explicitly. You pointing this out made me see it as another source of confusion.
One clarification about ‘promoting Manager Tools’: The reason is that I’m using arguments from authority a lot. From the authority of Manager Tools. In order for those arguments to be convincing, I need to establish that Manager Tools is reliable. That’s why I write how their guidance leads to success etc. Now, arguments from authority tend to be weak (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority). If I had the time, I would write out all the arguments properly, gather data etc. But I don’t have the time, unfortunately. Also, it’s not crucial for my main point, particularly my original main point. My original main point is that Hirely does bad work (they’re hopefully doing better now – that’s why I half-assedly repurposed the article) and one can be convinced of that without being convinced by each and every sub-point.
As to the summary up-front: Recently I try to structure articles in a way that the title and the table of contents can be read as the summary. In this article this got lost a bit because of the repurposing.
Thanks for taking the time to write up balanced feedback! I was surprised.
I’m starting to understand the message from your and other comments that the tone of the article is distracting from the content and even causing people to misunderstand it. When I write another article, I will take more time to work on the tone.
I knew that the introduction is written in a choppy way, but I didn’t expect that it would be hard to read. Thanks for telling me that. Good point also that I should introduce key terms more explicitly. You pointing this out made me see it as another source of confusion.
One clarification about ‘promoting Manager Tools’: The reason is that I’m using arguments from authority a lot. From the authority of Manager Tools. In order for those arguments to be convincing, I need to establish that Manager Tools is reliable. That’s why I write how their guidance leads to success etc. Now, arguments from authority tend to be weak (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority). If I had the time, I would write out all the arguments properly, gather data etc. But I don’t have the time, unfortunately. Also, it’s not crucial for my main point, particularly my original main point. My original main point is that Hirely does bad work (they’re hopefully doing better now – that’s why I half-assedly repurposed the article) and one can be convinced of that without being convinced by each and every sub-point.
The hyperlink thing is to comply with my own demand from an old LessWrong post: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ytStDZ7BaC23GvGPb/please-give-your-links-speaking-names It wasn’t that much extra work because I wrote a little Clojure script to transform one Markdown file into another.
As to the summary up-front: Recently I try to structure articles in a way that the title and the table of contents can be read as the summary. In this article this got lost a bit because of the repurposing.