I wonder whether it would be good to think about blog posts as open journaling.
When you write in a journal, you are writing for yourself and don’t expect anyone else to read it. I guess you can call that “closed journaling”. In which case “open journaling” would mean that you expect others to read it, and you at least loosely are trying to cater to them.
Well, there are pros and cons to look at here. The main con of treating blog posts as open journaling is that the quality will be lower than a more traditional blog post that is more refined. On the other hand, a big pro is that, relatedly, a wider and more diverse range of posts will get published. We’re loosening the filter.
It also may encourage an environment of more collaboration, and people thinking things through together. If someone posts something where they spent a lot of time on it, and I notice something that seems off, I’d probably lean towards assuming that I just didn’t understand it, and it is in fact correct. I’d also lean towards assuming that it wouldn’t be the best idea to take up peoples time by posting a comment about my feeling that something is off. On the other hand, if I know that a post is more exploratory, I’d lean less strongly towards those assumptions and be more willing to jump in and discuss things.
It seems that there is agreement here on LessWrong that there is a place for this more exploratory style of posting. Not every post needs to be super refined. For less refined posts, there is the shortform, open thread and personal blog posts. So it’s not that I’m proposing anything new here. It’s just that “open journaling” seems like a cool way to conceptualize this. The idea occurred to me while I was on the train this morning and thinking about it as an “open journal” just inspired me to write up a few ideas that have been swimming around in my head.
I wonder whether it would be good to think about blog posts as open journaling.
When you write in a journal, you are writing for yourself and don’t expect anyone else to read it. I guess you can call that “closed journaling”. In which case “open journaling” would mean that you expect others to read it, and you at least loosely are trying to cater to them.
Well, there are pros and cons to look at here. The main con of treating blog posts as open journaling is that the quality will be lower than a more traditional blog post that is more refined. On the other hand, a big pro is that, relatedly, a wider and more diverse range of posts will get published. We’re loosening the filter.
It also may encourage an environment of more collaboration, and people thinking things through together. If someone posts something where they spent a lot of time on it, and I notice something that seems off, I’d probably lean towards assuming that I just didn’t understand it, and it is in fact correct. I’d also lean towards assuming that it wouldn’t be the best idea to take up peoples time by posting a comment about my feeling that something is off. On the other hand, if I know that a post is more exploratory, I’d lean less strongly towards those assumptions and be more willing to jump in and discuss things.
It seems that there is agreement here on LessWrong that there is a place for this more exploratory style of posting. Not every post needs to be super refined. For less refined posts, there is the shortform, open thread and personal blog posts. So it’s not that I’m proposing anything new here. It’s just that “open journaling” seems like a cool way to conceptualize this. The idea occurred to me while I was on the train this morning and thinking about it as an “open journal” just inspired me to write up a few ideas that have been swimming around in my head.