(Note that I’ve addressed other parts of your comment in a separate response.)
Moreover I don’t feel like I really understand your motivations for writing this essay.
I’ve sat with this part of your comment for a few minutes, and, to be honest, it makes me feel a bit… unsafe?
I am aware that some posts include a “Why did I write this?” section (see, e.g., this one), or similar, and that this is very helpful because it makes clear the decision relevance of the post (among maybe other things).
But I’m fairly sure that most posts don’t have a section like this, and that most authors don’t explicitly address their motivations for writing their post.
Like, I started putting pen to paper (or, rather, fingers to keyboard) on something I’d been thinking about lately, and that’s how the post came into existence. I think that a decent fraction of forum posts get written in roughly this manner?
(Some of my other motivation for writing this post was Cunningham’s Law-related, which I think is also a pretty regular motivation?)
I personally find it motivating to publish things I’ve written: the feeling of creating something and having it be permanent somewhere helps in getting me actually sit down in the first place and put pen to paper. (Permanent, at least, within the bounds my foreseeable lifetime.) This is a behavior I want to reinforce, I believe it’s valuable.
But now your comment is making me second-guess this learning by writing habit that I thought I wanted to cultivate.
(If your reason for questioning my motivations is something along the lines of, “I think it’s net-negative that you’ve published this post, because it’s not productive or decision relevant, and so I don’t see why you wrote it in the first place. Moreover, it’s drawing attention away from other posts on this forum that are productive and decision relevant”, then I think I (and most other authors?) would have been happy for you to simply down-vote. (Note that I do think the other points in your comment on my post are valuable, and I appreciate you making them—I’m talking here about your questioning my motivations for writing the post at all.))
As things stand, I feel like I’m being made to reexamine and defend the existence of my post, and this feels like… an unwarranted burden?
I mean, getting into the specifics of the post, I think when I started writing I envisaged it being more about applause lights in general and less about diversity in particular, but the way the post ended up is just, kind of, how it happened to write itself.
Am I missing something? I currently feel genuinely unsure about publishing posts in future. (For instance, whether I should evaluate drafts once I’m done writing, and only publish if they meet a certain bar; whether I should move away from the sit-and-start-writing process that led to this post’s creation, and toward only writing posts that have clear theory of change/decision relevance from the get-go.)
Hey Will, I just want to say I do appreciate hearing your genuine feelings and I appreciate your writing. I certainly don’t want to make you feel unsafe and I apologize for doing so. I also certainly don’t want to induce a chilling effect on your future posting. I had thought that we were of roughly similar status with roughly similar abilities to harm the other professionally, such that by picking on you I wouldn’t be threatening or punching down. Note obviously I have no intention of actually harming you. Furthermore, my overall view of you, which is quite high/positive, remains unchanged.
I think I could’ve picked my question more carefully and I think it’s totally fair for you to not choose to defend the existence of your post. I think there’s a lot here related to the content that makes it unusually difficult to engage on this.
On the other side, I will say that considering your audience before publishing is a good norm. If you don’t currently do that, taking 5 minutes to think about “Who do I want to read this post? What do I want them to do?” could be a good change in routine. For posts without any editing or consideration of audience, I think more informal platforms like Shortform or Facebook can be better suited.
(Note that I’ve addressed other parts of your comment in a separate response.)
I’ve sat with this part of your comment for a few minutes, and, to be honest, it makes me feel a bit… unsafe?
I am aware that some posts include a “Why did I write this?” section (see, e.g., this one), or similar, and that this is very helpful because it makes clear the decision relevance of the post (among maybe other things).
But I’m fairly sure that most posts don’t have a section like this, and that most authors don’t explicitly address their motivations for writing their post.
Like, I started putting pen to paper (or, rather, fingers to keyboard) on something I’d been thinking about lately, and that’s how the post came into existence. I think that a decent fraction of forum posts get written in roughly this manner?
(Some of my other motivation for writing this post was Cunningham’s Law-related, which I think is also a pretty regular motivation?)
I personally find it motivating to publish things I’ve written: the feeling of creating something and having it be permanent somewhere helps in getting me actually sit down in the first place and put pen to paper. (Permanent, at least, within the bounds my foreseeable lifetime.) This is a behavior I want to reinforce, I believe it’s valuable.
But now your comment is making me second-guess this learning by writing habit that I thought I wanted to cultivate.
(If your reason for questioning my motivations is something along the lines of, “I think it’s net-negative that you’ve published this post, because it’s not productive or decision relevant, and so I don’t see why you wrote it in the first place. Moreover, it’s drawing attention away from other posts on this forum that are productive and decision relevant”, then I think I (and most other authors?) would have been happy for you to simply down-vote. (Note that I do think the other points in your comment on my post are valuable, and I appreciate you making them—I’m talking here about your questioning my motivations for writing the post at all.))
As things stand, I feel like I’m being made to reexamine and defend the existence of my post, and this feels like… an unwarranted burden?
I mean, getting into the specifics of the post, I think when I started writing I envisaged it being more about applause lights in general and less about diversity in particular, but the way the post ended up is just, kind of, how it happened to write itself.
Am I missing something? I currently feel genuinely unsure about publishing posts in future. (For instance, whether I should evaluate drafts once I’m done writing, and only publish if they meet a certain bar; whether I should move away from the sit-and-start-writing process that led to this post’s creation, and toward only writing posts that have clear theory of change/decision relevance from the get-go.)
Hey Will, I just want to say I do appreciate hearing your genuine feelings and I appreciate your writing. I certainly don’t want to make you feel unsafe and I apologize for doing so. I also certainly don’t want to induce a chilling effect on your future posting. I had thought that we were of roughly similar status with roughly similar abilities to harm the other professionally, such that by picking on you I wouldn’t be threatening or punching down. Note obviously I have no intention of actually harming you. Furthermore, my overall view of you, which is quite high/positive, remains unchanged.
I think I could’ve picked my question more carefully and I think it’s totally fair for you to not choose to defend the existence of your post. I think there’s a lot here related to the content that makes it unusually difficult to engage on this.
I get some of that feeling, and I disagree with your conclusion. Keep on doing what you are doing, and keep writing possibly wrong posts.
On the other side, I will say that considering your audience before publishing is a good norm. If you don’t currently do that, taking 5 minutes to think about “Who do I want to read this post? What do I want them to do?” could be a good change in routine. For posts without any editing or consideration of audience, I think more informal platforms like Shortform or Facebook can be better suited.
This perspective sounds reasonable to me. Thanks.