Don’t you think there is a tradeoff between “writing well*” and “publishing at all”?
For me
I’m trying to write-at-all as a strategy for improving long term. If I’d have an imaginary bar such as “write at least 30% as well as Scott Alexander” which is also emotional (I’d feel posting otherwise is potentially “unethical”, omg), I wouldn’t publish anything. Many of us are already perfectionists beyond what is effective, don’t you think?
Something that would help me is feedback on how my drafts could be better. Right now, I see no upvotes sometimes, 71 upvotes other times, and this isn’t so actionable for me. For example, do you have feedback on this or this? Is it just that I commented late?
Other creative ways of resolving this tradeoff
The LW team is trying to tackle the “people are too hesitant to publish” problem by giving free reviews.
Don’t you think there is a tradeoff between “writing well*” and “publishing at all”?
For me
I’m trying to write-at-all as a strategy for improving long term. If I’d have an imaginary bar such as “write at least 30% as well as Scott Alexander” which is also emotional (I’d feel posting otherwise is potentially “unethical”, omg), I wouldn’t publish anything. Many of us are already perfectionists beyond what is effective, don’t you think?
Something that would help me is feedback on how my drafts could be better. Right now, I see no upvotes sometimes, 71 upvotes other times, and this isn’t so actionable for me. For example, do you have feedback on this or this? Is it just that I commented late?
Other creative ways of resolving this tradeoff
The LW team is trying to tackle the “people are too hesitant to publish” problem by giving free reviews.
The Nonlinear library [edit: Oh, that’s you!] is reaching more people by turning articles into audiobooks.
There was a post (I can’t find) about how to write rigorously without spending too much time on research. That one really affected me personally.
My intuition is that going for some creative 3rd solution would be better than making an emotional barrier to posting.