<story><title>Blogging Is Not Dead</title><url>https://www.garron.blog/en/blog/blogging.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>foob</author><text>If you want to see more high quality blog posts, then I highly recommend taking actions to help promote and encourage them. Sign up for a mailing list or subscribe to an RSS feed when you find a blog that consistently produces quality material. Post new or old content on Hacker News, Reddit, Lobsters, Twitter, and other communities where you think they would be a good fit. Upvote and retweet quality content that you run across, and flag stuff that&amp;#x27;s blatantly marketing spam. Leave comments on the blog or reach out to the author over email. Even as a single individual, these sort of actions have a much bigger impact than you might expect.&lt;p&gt;I used to blog extensively, and I&amp;#x27;ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. The content I would write was loosely for marketing purposes, but I put a lot of effort into generating high quality content that I would genuinely enjoy reading myself. An article that I spent 50+ hours on and felt very proud of might have a 30% chance of reaching the front page of Hacker News. A fluffy post with a decent title that I spent only an hour or two on would still have a 10-15% chance of front paging. The way the math works out, it&amp;#x27;s simply much lower ROI to generate quality content. It&amp;#x27;s also a bit heartbreaking to invest a lot of time making something for other people to enjoy only for nobody to ever see it.&lt;p&gt;The second chance queue on Hacker News is a major step in the right direction, and I&amp;#x27;m grateful for all the times where my posts were given another chance. A lot of great content still slips through the cracks however, and relatively small actions by community members would go a long way towards helping incentives align towards generating quality content.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>netcan</author><text>About 15 years ago I was following some small podcast on my new ipod nano. Nothing too grandiose. It was about beekeeping,  worm farming... Probably dozens of listeners, hundreds at most&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the podcaster went dark for a week and then posted something about hiatus. I sent him a &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;thanks for the content, I&amp;#x27;ll be here when you get back&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot; type message.&lt;p&gt;A week or two later an episode went online. He explained that he has periodic depression issues, read out my message and explained how it made him feel better. He&amp;#x27;d been dwelling on &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;everyone knows and thinks I&amp;#x27;m an idiot&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot; thoughts that come with the territory. Just a friendly thanks (to someone providing me a show for free) meant something to him in that moment.&lt;p&gt;Since then I try make a point of little things like that, especially to little guys.&lt;p&gt;Let them know you enjoy a blog, if you do. Thank them. Be friendly. We all need encouragement, and I now feel that we also owe it.&lt;p&gt;And I definitely agree on the promotion too.</text></comment>
<story><title>Blogging Is Not Dead</title><url>https://www.garron.blog/en/blog/blogging.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>foob</author><text>If you want to see more high quality blog posts, then I highly recommend taking actions to help promote and encourage them. Sign up for a mailing list or subscribe to an RSS feed when you find a blog that consistently produces quality material. Post new or old content on Hacker News, Reddit, Lobsters, Twitter, and other communities where you think they would be a good fit. Upvote and retweet quality content that you run across, and flag stuff that&amp;#x27;s blatantly marketing spam. Leave comments on the blog or reach out to the author over email. Even as a single individual, these sort of actions have a much bigger impact than you might expect.&lt;p&gt;I used to blog extensively, and I&amp;#x27;ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. The content I would write was loosely for marketing purposes, but I put a lot of effort into generating high quality content that I would genuinely enjoy reading myself. An article that I spent 50+ hours on and felt very proud of might have a 30% chance of reaching the front page of Hacker News. A fluffy post with a decent title that I spent only an hour or two on would still have a 10-15% chance of front paging. The way the math works out, it&amp;#x27;s simply much lower ROI to generate quality content. It&amp;#x27;s also a bit heartbreaking to invest a lot of time making something for other people to enjoy only for nobody to ever see it.&lt;p&gt;The second chance queue on Hacker News is a major step in the right direction, and I&amp;#x27;m grateful for all the times where my posts were given another chance. A lot of great content still slips through the cracks however, and relatively small actions by community members would go a long way towards helping incentives align towards generating quality content.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thomasahle</author><text>Interesting, I didn&amp;#x27;t know about the second chance queue. This appears to be the best source of information: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=11662380&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=11662380&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Personally I was sad when my tiny python chess engine Sunfish [1] didn&amp;#x27;t make it past the two-three upvotes stage. However about half a year later somebody else submitted it and it got a lot of traction.&lt;p&gt;I wonder how accepted it is to resubmit the same, or a version of, your project or blog post, to try your luck again.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;thomasahle&amp;#x2F;sunfish&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;thomasahle&amp;#x2F;sunfish&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>