I would strongly prefer if people who want to write series of articles used the style that is used in the Sequences: Never link forward (refer to something you will write in the future), only link back. Put meta-articles after the content articles, not before them. Don’t use introductions; use summaries instead. -- These are 3 ways of saying the same thing. Don’t “Introduction; Introduction to part 1; Article 1A; Article1B; Introduction to part 2; Article 2A; Article 2B”; do “1A; 1B; Conclusion from 1A and 1B; 2A; 2B; Conclusion from 2A and 2B; Overall conclusion” instead.
How to achieve that: If you have many things you want to say, think about how they depend on each other, pick one of those that can be explained first, and post that as your first article. If the thing is too large for one article, do the same thing recursively: split it into multiple parts, and post one of the parts that does not depend on having already read the others. If you want to explain how e.g. 5 different things fit together, write that as the sixth article, not the first one.
One of the reasons is that this allows voting on articles by their merit. How am I supposed to vote for an introduction, if I have no idea yet whether it is an introduction to something smart or something stupid (or even something that will never get written)? The introduction adds no value for me (just makes empty promises), therefore… I downvote.
I’m completely in agreement with you as to your proposed structure of article-writing, and in thinking about future pieces, I’ve visualized them in exactly those terms. As it happens, I actually did exactly that for this piece, since it grew from a separate piece that was getting very off-topic.
That said, my Glide Meditations aren’t really meant to be a “cohesive” body of work in the sense that they build off of each other to reach a final conclusion. They’re more like individual reading responses similar to something you’d write for a class, more a stream-of-consciousness than anything else, and they’re mostly intended to track my own progress in processing what I read, rather than being directly aimed at providing fresh insight (though it’d be nice if they accomplished both!). I realize that’s probably not what most people are looking for here, particularly from someone without an otherwise representative body of work, so I’ll just have to accept that.
Thank you again for taking the time to comment, especially since negative feedback can so often be either mean-spirited (which yours certainly was not) or worse, unsaid, which doesn’t help anyone. I appreciate you taking the time!
Too much introduction, not enough content.
I would strongly prefer if people who want to write series of articles used the style that is used in the Sequences: Never link forward (refer to something you will write in the future), only link back. Put meta-articles after the content articles, not before them. Don’t use introductions; use summaries instead. -- These are 3 ways of saying the same thing. Don’t “Introduction; Introduction to part 1; Article 1A; Article1B; Introduction to part 2; Article 2A; Article 2B”; do “1A; 1B; Conclusion from 1A and 1B; 2A; 2B; Conclusion from 2A and 2B; Overall conclusion” instead.
How to achieve that: If you have many things you want to say, think about how they depend on each other, pick one of those that can be explained first, and post that as your first article. If the thing is too large for one article, do the same thing recursively: split it into multiple parts, and post one of the parts that does not depend on having already read the others. If you want to explain how e.g. 5 different things fit together, write that as the sixth article, not the first one.
One of the reasons is that this allows voting on articles by their merit. How am I supposed to vote for an introduction, if I have no idea yet whether it is an introduction to something smart or something stupid (or even something that will never get written)? The introduction adds no value for me (just makes empty promises), therefore… I downvote.
I very much appreciate your feedback, thank you!
I’m completely in agreement with you as to your proposed structure of article-writing, and in thinking about future pieces, I’ve visualized them in exactly those terms. As it happens, I actually did exactly that for this piece, since it grew from a separate piece that was getting very off-topic.
That said, my Glide Meditations aren’t really meant to be a “cohesive” body of work in the sense that they build off of each other to reach a final conclusion. They’re more like individual reading responses similar to something you’d write for a class, more a stream-of-consciousness than anything else, and they’re mostly intended to track my own progress in processing what I read, rather than being directly aimed at providing fresh insight (though it’d be nice if they accomplished both!). I realize that’s probably not what most people are looking for here, particularly from someone without an otherwise representative body of work, so I’ll just have to accept that.
Thank you again for taking the time to comment, especially since negative feedback can so often be either mean-spirited (which yours certainly was not) or worse, unsaid, which doesn’t help anyone. I appreciate you taking the time!