I believe you may have missed the point of the article. The idea was that you have to strive to make your content concise, appealing, and engaging, so that people will want to read it.
Actually, I think the previous comment has made the point of Steven Pressman's article. I, too, came here looking for things to read. I want to find information, to see new ideas and viewpoints. On the other hand, I don't care what ten_fingers read before this or after. I don't care that his power supply was making noise. And no, I didn't finish his comment.
It was too long, rambling, and seemingly overflowing with the opinion that ten_fingers is the most important person in the world and the rest of us should drop everything to absorb his every utterance. In short, not to put too fine a point on it, that his shit don't stink.
That's a personal attack and offensive and inappropriate.
My point was about information as the desired content. For that point I gave some examples, today before coming to HN, after HN, and some recent reading, and those were good examples of information to make my point. The point is the content, and the examples were fully appropriate.
I made a point, clearly, strongly, and thoroughly. Apparently my doing so made you angry. Apparently you resent seeing points made.
You are angry about something, but I did nothing wrong. Your anger is something you have done wrong.
My last sentence was possibly out of line. For that, I apologize.
The remainder of my comments can in no reasonable way be interpreted as a personal attack. They only concerned your comment, and I stand by them. You may believe you made a point clearly, strongly, and thoroughly; I seriously disagree.
Also, be careful about conflating anger and disagreement.
> seemingly overflowing with the opinion that ten_fingers is the most important person in the world and the rest of us should drop everything to absorb his every utterance
is not supported with facts and is based on nothing solid, just a wild opinion, full of anger, wildly wrong, insulting, and out of place. Say something like to someone in person in a bar and risk getting a bottle broken over your head.
All I did was comment on the article's claims of some good writing lesson. I don't think the lesson was good and used examples to illustrate why. What I wrote was fine and deserved no insults.
You appear to have missed the point of my post: I don't care even as much as a weak little hollow hoot about "concise, appealing, and engaging" and already am looking hard for what to read. I will want to read it if and only if there is solid, useful information there. The author didn't mention solid, useful information.
"Concise" usually means omitted crucial details.
Again, the author is trying to get read by providing a form of entertainment based on emotions, and what I want is information. In the culture of the author, information is regarded as really offensive, and that is the reason many potential readers regard such writing as "shit".
To borrow from the humanities culture, I'm willing to read, I'm wanting to read, I'm waiting to read when I can find content to read with useful information.
So, when I don't read his copy, he concludes that I don't want to read. No. I DO want to read. But what I want to read is useful information. He thinks the issue of my not reading is that I don't want to read, and I think it is because he wants to provide only emotional content and not useful information.
You're not 99% of readers, sorry to say. and you're a different usecase anyway...you go to sources you already have a habit of believing has content worth reading, no matter the presentation. But 99% of aspiring writers are not in these situations...that is, belonging to a brand that has loyal repeat readers. for them, it's best for them to lose any preconceptions of entitlement that they deserve to be read.
No, I don't think that that's correct now with media now: Consider Web sites that want to report news on some of the common subjects, e.g., politics, the economy, international relations, business, science, technology, computing, energy. For each of these subjects, there are Web sites with interested readers.
Then, good news for aspiring writers: For such a subject and Web site, go for it! Just write some solid, new, meaningful, hopefully useful and insightful, information about the subject. Then attach an appropriate headline, subheading, and first paragraph, and, presto, be confident that you will have done 'good writing' and will reach about as much of your audience as is reasonable. No tricks. No magic. No secrets. No special techniques. Just accumulate, organize, and document the information and, then, publish it on an appropriate Web site with appropriate titles, etc. Then, if I am interested in your subject, you will get my full attention; no more secrets of writing will be required.
Here is a big, huge point about writing now, media now, and the points here: It has finally become fairly clear that the best writing on Web sites now is not from 'writers' or journalists at all! Such 'writers' can polish their craft, work on their technique, etc. all they want and will still lose. What such writers are losing out to are subject matter experts with no particular skills in writing at all. So, for a piece about, say, US-China trade, f'get about a business journalist-writer and, instead, get an expert in US-China trade. Want to know about a new supercar? F'get about the auto 'journalists' and, instead, go to a video at Jay Leno's Web site and watch the chief engineer of the car describe the details.
This lesson has been so well appreciated that many Web 'news' sites are trying to get as much of their content as possible from subject matter experts who are not 'writers',
with good lessons or bad, at all.
E.g., want to know about venture capital? Okay, read the business journalists? Usually not! Instead read Hacker News, especially the comments, Fred Wilson's blog AVC.com, etc. Net, the good content is not where writers have learned lessons in writing but where the writers are subject matter experts and know what the heck they are writing about, i.e., have the information.
