To close off this ramble, I’m a bit disheartened. My fun easy writing was more popular than my attempts at substantive intellectual progress contribution. It’s okay that it flopped, and it makes sense that kind of writing’s harder, it’s just a disappointing update about the writing incentive landscape.
This has been my experience also. Only rarely do things I put significant effort into perform well in terms of votes. It’s often the quick, casually written pieces that I barely edited that people love.
I think it’s in part due to selection effects. The things I can write quickly in an hour or two and be happy to publish are the things I can explain easily because they are easily accessible and understood by everyone. The things I have to write slowly are more complicated topics by nature and thus interest fewer people and it’s less likely that my presentation will connect with a large audience.
(The would-be counter example is that my mostly highly upvoted post of all time took a lot of effort to produce, but it was about an extremely accessible topic: the death of my mother.)
What I can tell you, though, is that having a catalog of deep posts that I put a lot of effort into builds on itself over time. Those posts don’t connect with everyone, but then I’ll meet someone and find out that what I wrote was life-changing for them.
It’s hard for me to know if the effort I put into them was worth it, in that was there a version of that post I wrote less well that connected equally well. I’m not sure, it’s a bit hard to test, especially since often I spend a long time writing a post to get clear on the ideas myself, not just to massage the language. But I can say that, of those posts I labored over, they are among the most impactful, even if they were not popular on initial publication.
Oh, and I should also note, since you mention incentives, that I largely see my job as a writer to ignore what my audience wants. This is dangerous advice if taken too far, but what I mean is that people will reward me for writing slop, and I have to decide, am I here to write slop, or am I here to write something else even if people don’t like it as much. I choose to optimize for something other than upvotes, though I do care if people can make sense of what I’m saying and it’s worthwhile to them that I said it.
This has been my experience also. Only rarely do things I put significant effort into perform well in terms of votes. It’s often the quick, casually written pieces that I barely edited that people love.
I think it’s in part due to selection effects. The things I can write quickly in an hour or two and be happy to publish are the things I can explain easily because they are easily accessible and understood by everyone. The things I have to write slowly are more complicated topics by nature and thus interest fewer people and it’s less likely that my presentation will connect with a large audience.
(The would-be counter example is that my mostly highly upvoted post of all time took a lot of effort to produce, but it was about an extremely accessible topic: the death of my mother.)
What I can tell you, though, is that having a catalog of deep posts that I put a lot of effort into builds on itself over time. Those posts don’t connect with everyone, but then I’ll meet someone and find out that what I wrote was life-changing for them.
It’s hard for me to know if the effort I put into them was worth it, in that was there a version of that post I wrote less well that connected equally well. I’m not sure, it’s a bit hard to test, especially since often I spend a long time writing a post to get clear on the ideas myself, not just to massage the language. But I can say that, of those posts I labored over, they are among the most impactful, even if they were not popular on initial publication.
Oh, and I should also note, since you mention incentives, that I largely see my job as a writer to ignore what my audience wants. This is dangerous advice if taken too far, but what I mean is that people will reward me for writing slop, and I have to decide, am I here to write slop, or am I here to write something else even if people don’t like it as much. I choose to optimize for something other than upvotes, though I do care if people can make sense of what I’m saying and it’s worthwhile to them that I said it.