

Reputation: kind of a big deal - holman
http://zachholman.com/2010/12/reputation/

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thesz
>If you take an action — write a blog post, publish a photo, launch a website
— you want your action to spread to as many people as possible.

Overgeneralization, is what I see there.

Actually, "avoiding success at all costs" motto is great.

I think that quote from Adam Chlipala (author or Ur and Ur/Web) is quite
appropriate:

"I also want to emphasize that I'm not trying to maximize adoption of Ur/Web.
Rather, I'm trying to maximize the effectiveness of people who do choose to
use it. This means that I'm completely happy if basic features of Ur/Web mean
that 90% of programmers will never be able to use it."

[http://www.impredicative.com/pipermail/ur/2010-December/0003...](http://www.impredicative.com/pipermail/ur/2010-December/000329.html)

I think that author is wrong.

You don't have to have superfans.

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holman
I'm not saying you _have_ to have superfans; you're welcome to do whatever
you'd like (and there are plenty of paths to success!) I just think there's so
many examples of a small, passionate userbase forming the bedrock of success.
Why not try to foster that?

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evanhanson
A wise man once said "Don't try to be a great man; just be a man, and let
history make its own judgments."

The reason _why (used as an example in the article) has the cult-like
following he does is that he made fun, interesting things, not because he
marketed himself or gamed the social system around him. Sure, a bit of self-
promotion is often a good thing, but if you're expending lots of energy on
making yourself into an icon, you've got less use actually earning such a
status.

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dzuc
Related: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie>

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mashmac2
See also: Seth Godin on Tribes
([http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_w...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead.html)).

~~~
nhangen
While I love Seth's thoughts on tribes, the downside of the success of that
book is that now there's so much talk about "my tribe" or "our tribe" that
people fail to realize that none of us really have a tribe, per se. We have
fans that happen to like us at the time. That's always subject to change.

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kathybootsri
This sounds like it would be an additional chapter on Rework titled "Don't Be
Big On Numbers Through Social Media," well thought-out.

