But it needs to be the type of interaction where you notice and remember the author. For example, if you go to LessWrong, you are more likely to associate “I read this on LessWrong” with the information, than if you just visited LessWrong articles from links shared on social networks. (And it is probably easier to remember Zvi than an average author at LessWrong, because Zvi recently posted a sequence of articles, which is easier to remember than an equal number of articles on unrelated topics.) You need to notice “articles by Zvi” as a separate category first, and only then your brain can decide to associate trust with this category.
(Slate Star Codex takes this a bit further, because for my brain it is easier to remember “I read this on SSC” than to remember the set of articles written by Scott on LessWrong. This is branding. If your quality is consistently high, making the fact “this was written by me” more noticeable increases your reputation.)
The flip side of the coin is that the culture of sharing hyperlinks on social networks destroys trust. If you read hundred articles from hundred different sources every day, your brain has a problem to keep tabs. Before internet, when you regularly read maybe 10 different journals, you gradually noticed that X is reliable and Y is unreliable. Because sometimes you read ten reliable stories on one day, and ten unreliable stories on a different day, and it felt differently. But on internet, there are hundred websites, and you switch between them, so even if a few of the are notoriously bad, it is hard to notice. Even harder, because the same website can have multiple authors with wildly different quality. A scientist and a crackpot can have a blog on the same domain. With paper sources, the authors within one source were more balanced. (LessWrong is also kinda balanced, especially if you only consider the upvoted articles.)
Interesting points about social networks and link aggregators. I think you’re right.
But at the same time, after years of reading Hacker News, I start to notice and come across the same authors, and I find myself going “Oh I remember you” when I browse HN. It’s possible that this experience is rare, but my impression is that I’m a pretty “middle of the pack” reader, and so I expect that others have similar experiences. So then, it seems to me that the effect is still large enough to be worth noting.
Building reputation by repeated interaction.
But it needs to be the type of interaction where you notice and remember the author. For example, if you go to LessWrong, you are more likely to associate “I read this on LessWrong” with the information, than if you just visited LessWrong articles from links shared on social networks. (And it is probably easier to remember Zvi than an average author at LessWrong, because Zvi recently posted a sequence of articles, which is easier to remember than an equal number of articles on unrelated topics.) You need to notice “articles by Zvi” as a separate category first, and only then your brain can decide to associate trust with this category.
(Slate Star Codex takes this a bit further, because for my brain it is easier to remember “I read this on SSC” than to remember the set of articles written by Scott on LessWrong. This is branding. If your quality is consistently high, making the fact “this was written by me” more noticeable increases your reputation.)
The flip side of the coin is that the culture of sharing hyperlinks on social networks destroys trust. If you read hundred articles from hundred different sources every day, your brain has a problem to keep tabs. Before internet, when you regularly read maybe 10 different journals, you gradually noticed that X is reliable and Y is unreliable. Because sometimes you read ten reliable stories on one day, and ten unreliable stories on a different day, and it felt differently. But on internet, there are hundred websites, and you switch between them, so even if a few of the are notoriously bad, it is hard to notice. Even harder, because the same website can have multiple authors with wildly different quality. A scientist and a crackpot can have a blog on the same domain. With paper sources, the authors within one source were more balanced. (LessWrong is also kinda balanced, especially if you only consider the upvoted articles.)
Interesting points about social networks and link aggregators. I think you’re right.
But at the same time, after years of reading Hacker News, I start to notice and come across the same authors, and I find myself going “Oh I remember you” when I browse HN. It’s possible that this experience is rare, but my impression is that I’m a pretty “middle of the pack” reader, and so I expect that others have similar experiences. So then, it seems to me that the effect is still large enough to be worth noting.