What are the best blogs that follow the Long Content philosophy?
In his About page, Gwern describes the idea of Long Content as follows:
I have read blogs for many years and most blog posts are the triumph of the hare over the tortoise. They are meant to be read by a few people on a weekday in 2004 and never again, and are quicklyabandoned—and perhaps as Assange says, not a moment too soon. (But isn’t that sad? Isn’t it a terrible ROI for one’s time?) On the other hand, the best blogs always seem to be building something: they are rough drafts—works in progress. So I did not wish to write a blog. Then what? More than just “evergreen content”, what would constitute Long Content as opposed to the existing culture of Short Content? How does one live in a Long Now sort of way?
So far, I have only encountered one page outside of the rat-adjacent sphere that resembles the aforementioned blogs: that of Cosma Shalizi. However, I’m much less familiar with the non-rationalist blogosphere, so there must surely be others. Please post them here if you’ve encountered them! (And also, feel free to link to rat-adjacent blogs that I’ve neglected.)
The real way to live in the long now, I suspect, is to recognise that the vast majority of projects in human history that are shelved “until they’re ready” never, in fact, get released. This is because time and death often get in the way of polishing up your magnum opus. Therefore the reasonable thing in the long view may be to just ship the damn post/video/game/idea, because that’s the way it gets into other people’s minds and gains a life of its own beyond the confines of the draft folder. Possibly the idea, if it is good enough, will be finished by others, or even outlive you.
This is also Gwern’s answer, in the paragraph right after the one Rauno quoted. The main difference is that he rejects finish lines, opting instead for perpetual drafts, like software.
My answer is that one uses such a framework to work on projects that are too big to work on normally or too tedious. (Conscientiousness is often lacking online or in volunteer communities18 and many useful things go undone.) Knowing your site will survive for decades to come gives you the mental wherewithal to tackle long-term tasks like gathering information for years, and such persistence can be useful19—if one holds onto every glimmer of genius for years, then even the dullest person may look a bit like a genius himself20. (Even experienced professionals can only write at their peak for a few hours a day—usually first thing in the morning, it seems.) Half the challenge of fighting procrastination is the pain of starting—I find when I actually get into the swing of working on even dull tasks, it’s not so bad. So this suggests a solution: never start. Merely have perpetual drafts, which one tweaks from time to time. And the rest takes care of itself.
Also I like this:
What is next? So far the pages will persist through time, and they will gradually improve over time. But a truly Long Now approach would be to make them be improved by time—make them more valuable the more time passes. …
One idea I am exploring is adding long-term predictions like the ones I make on PredictionBook.com. Many27 pages explicitly or implicitly make predictions about the future. As time passes, predictions would be validated or falsified, providing feedback on the ideas.28
For example, the Evangelion essay’s paradigm implies many things about the future movies in Rebuild of Evangelion29; The Melancholy of Kyon is an extended prediction30 of future plot developments in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series; Haskell Summer of Code has suggestions about what makes good projects, which could be turned into predictions by applying them to predict success or failure when the next Summer of Code choices are announced. And so on.
At the risk of naming the obvious, Wikipedia is pure long content. Seirdy updates some of their posts over time, especially their post on inclusive websites.
Wikipedia isn’t a blog, and I don’t think Rauno would say that he’s interested in wiki-like stuff had someone suggested to him that the notion of Long Content he’s using here is overly restricted to ~blogs.
Yeah, Wikipedia would have deserved a mention, though I’m primarily looking for more hidden gems. Thanks for mentioning Seirdy, I hadn’t heard of it before!
What are the best blogs that follow the Long Content philosophy?
In his About page, Gwern describes the idea of Long Content as follows:
Gwern himself has, of course, been following this approach to blogging for a long time. There are other rationalist(-adjacent) blogs that seem to follow a similar philosophy: niplav mentions Long Content as a direct inspiration, and the pages of Brian Tomasik, Mariven, Gavin Leech, and Yuxi Liu can also be said to fall into this category.
So far, I have only encountered one page outside of the rat-adjacent sphere that resembles the aforementioned blogs: that of Cosma Shalizi. However, I’m much less familiar with the non-rationalist blogosphere, so there must surely be others. Please post them here if you’ve encountered them! (And also, feel free to link to rat-adjacent blogs that I’ve neglected.)
The real way to live in the long now, I suspect, is to recognise that the vast majority of projects in human history that are shelved “until they’re ready” never, in fact, get released. This is because time and death often get in the way of polishing up your magnum opus. Therefore the reasonable thing in the long view may be to just ship the damn post/video/game/idea, because that’s the way it gets into other people’s minds and gains a life of its own beyond the confines of the draft folder. Possibly the idea, if it is good enough, will be finished by others, or even outlive you.
This is also Gwern’s answer, in the paragraph right after the one Rauno quoted. The main difference is that he rejects finish lines, opting instead for perpetual drafts, like software.
Also I like this:
At the risk of naming the obvious, Wikipedia is pure long content. Seirdy updates some of their posts over time, especially their post on inclusive websites.
Yes. Seems like the best way to make a website (for an individual) is a combination of blog + wiki.
Blog:
publish and forget
sometimes maybe add an “UPDATE” section; but if it would be too long, just write a new blog post and make the UPDATE refer to it
your fans can subscribe to the feed
Wiki:
keep updating as many times as you want to, in arbitrary order
Wikipedia isn’t a blog, and I don’t think Rauno would say that he’s interested in wiki-like stuff had someone suggested to him that the notion of Long Content he’s using here is overly restricted to ~blogs.
Yeah, Wikipedia would have deserved a mention, though I’m primarily looking for more hidden gems. Thanks for mentioning Seirdy, I hadn’t heard of it before!
I strongly recommend mathr (https://mathr.co.uk/web/) for a blog far outside the rat sphere with a “working on a draft for a long time” ethos.
Thanks, hadn’t heard of that one before!
I’ve always liked Adam Cadre’s website as a mix of blogging and longer-form content stuff.
Arrange for someone who will publish your incomplete drafts when you die.
Wikipedia?