Ask HN: What keeps you from writing a blog? - poushkar
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semicolonandson
I've blogged on and off since finishing college 11 years ago. Some posts about
programming got millions of hits.

But this was mostly a decade ago. Today it is very difficult to find readers
for blogs. This is due to:

1\. Professional content-farms having thoroughly won the SEO game.

2\. A shift in people's media consumption preferences from text to video and
podcasts/audio-books

This year I replaced all my blogging with YouTubing and am finding it vastly
easier to build an audience and connect with people.

I don't see myself going back to blogging and would strong recommend vlogging
or podcasting instead. Be a person of your times.

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nikivi
Since I started a wiki, I haven't wrote a single post. I think the reason is
that writing a 'blog post' feels like too much friction when I can just drop a
note somewhere in my corpus of knowledge.

Makes it easy for querying too.

[https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge)

~~~
slindsey
This is the exact reason that I started writing "posts" or "articles" even
though I haven't put any on a site yet. I was putting stuff in a wiki and felt
like they were unfinished ideas. I've found that the wiki is where the idea
goes and the article is where I can really flesh out understanding. When you
take the time to write something out with an outline and real consideration,
you understand it better. It has helped me figure out my own thoughts on a
subject when previously I only had surface opinions.

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CM30
For the most part, branding. I don't use my real name online, or have much
interest in doing so.

So I'm not entirely sure how I'd brand a blog that doesn't have a specific
subject to cover.

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heapslip
Being unable to find a point at which I'm happy with the outcome. I have an
uncontrollable fear that what I create is not good enough to share, be it
articles or code, while my rational self acknowledges that the quality is more
than ok and might help others.

I never wrote about basic "How to FP in X language", "Here's a script I wrote
over the weekend, it's amazing", "How to git" articles. This limitation I have
on myself pisses me off when I read most of the content on medium / dev.to. I
see that people are going for cheatsheets / how-to-x-in-10-minutes-but-not-
really-understand-what's-going-on content, and I feel that either my content
will not be consumed, or it will be discarded as pretentious.

Add to this that English is my second language, and other personal
insecurities and flaws (vanity - "I need to appear smart to my peers", vanity
guilt - "I'm trying to pose as someone else", etc), and you've got a pretty
bad recipe.

Over the years this has turned into over countless abandoned blogs and side
projects.

Lately I'm trying to fix this and other issues (not connecting to people, etc)
by streaming while I do stuff, but often I don't manage to convince myself to
do it.

This is very much an emotional problem that I am aware of, and I notice the
harmful patterns as the thoughts surface in my mind, but I'm not strong enough
to block yet.

^ everything here applies to comments as well

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trash3
What I'd like to blog about is a niche of a niche of a niche which I'd like to
someday consult in and I'm afraid I'd give too much away

~~~
ivars
You might shoot yourself in the foot with this attitude.

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potta_coffee
I can write but I'm afraid of exposing lack of technical excellence. It seems
like I should be a true expert if I'm going to write a technical blog, and I'm
not sure I'll ever feel like I'm that competent. Or another way of thinking
about it, there are so many awesome technical blogs out there - what do I have
to say that they're not saying but with more skill?

~~~
japhyr
I can relate to this fear; it's closely related to imposter syndrome. But I
think when we read established blogs we accept that they're probably accurate,
and we readily forgive mistakes and slight inaccuracies. We don't afford
ourselves that same forgiveness.

Writing a blog post, or any form of technical writing, is an exercise in
laying out what we know, and watching the conversation that follows. A
willingness to revise what we've written goes a long way toward addressing
this fear. I view public technical writing as a way to fill in my knowledge
gaps; when people point out my mistakes, it's like working on a larger team,
where there are more people to offer feedback.

That said, you do have to do your own research. There's a big difference
between writing a post that misses a couple nuanced points, and writing a post
that's entirely misdirected. Few people will criticize you for the first, but
if you make regular posts that are way off base you won't do anything good for
your reputation.

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non-entity
Mostly just not having something to write about. I probably will if I ever get
started on one of my numerous backlogged project ideas. Of course even then
there's issues to tackle, like choosing a domain name and getting anyone to
even see it.

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ManlyBread
How would I get people to read it? The search engines of today won't show my
tiny blog when they can show a huge, popular site instead. It would take years
of work to get any kind of a decent following.

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082349872349872
(a) memories of Dave Winer promoting blogging.

(b) a preference for long-form discourse.

~~~
poushkar
Could you elaborate a bit about Dave Winer? Has he somehow traumatized you?

~~~
082349872349872
Not traumatised, but at the time I did view going from shared discourse spaces
to sharded discourse (albeit with comments & blogrolls) spaces as having been
a backwards step. Looking back from today, I'll admit blogging was an
improvement upon its successors :-)

related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23337759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23337759)

Edit: props for turning off analytics on your blog. Молодець!

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justcomments12
Botnets hacking Google rankings

