> There is so much stuffing for a simple idea that I'm not sure if this piece deserves its own title, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
Frankly I had the same thought writing it :D
It's more of a stake in the ground sort of a thing I guess?
What I really want is somebody saying "hey, there is an open standard already here" so I can use it.
The idea has some legs, but they are weak for the many reasons pointed
out to me by fair criticism of "digital veganism". The main one is
that labelling is one small part of quality. Tijmen Schep in his 2016
"Design My Privacy" [1] proposed some really cool ideas around quality
and trustworthiness labelling of IoT/mobile devices, but ran into the
same issues. Responsibility ultimately lies with the consumer, and so
long as consumers remain uneducated as to why low quality is harmful,
and cannot verify the provenance of what they consume or the harmful
effects, nothing will change.
Right now we seem to be at the stage of "It's just McDonald's/KFC for
data - junk food is convenient, cheap and not a problem - therefore
mass production generative content won't be a problem".
The food analogy is powerful, but has limits, and I urge you to dig
into Digital Vegan [2] if you want to take it further.
> good that automattic is setting this policy for themselves
To clarify, this not a policy but a design choice and an intent of one PM :D
I cannot speak for the actual company policy because we are at an exploration phase.
> also @simonw’s “AI veganism”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32639643 its a good term because it will be about as popular and have as loud and passionate and few adherents as actual veganism
Diets are such a rich metaphor for the approach to content!
Fast food on the consumption side, veganism, kosher, paleo etc. on the production side
I work at Automattic as well and love P2s to the point that I changed my internal work title to "Accomplished P2 author".
I love how:
- They are async by default
- Incentivize deep analysis and thoughtful writing
- There is a canonical link for every piece of information, project, etc
- Discussions only need to happen once. Whenever somebody starts discussing a matter we analysed 3 years ago, somebody drops a link on slack to provide context.
To be fair, we are a company of 2000+ and every time we grow, we are actively discussing ways to evolve how we use P2s.
Keeping a writing culture requires habits as well. We specifically hire for good writting communication skills.
Is there something about P2s that prevents the number of them from multiplying out of control?
A persistent theme I see with Confluence is that data just keeps getting added into Confluence, but without any organization or structure. It effectively becomes a "write only" structure - data goes in, but doesn't come out.
This line from the post jumped out at me:
"It’s organized much like a Yammer or Facebook stream, but on the back end it still operates like a blog, allowing for archiving, advanced search, and rich media embeds."
Does advanced search help P2s retain their discoverability? Does that make it easier to find relevant P2s?
Yeah that's the issue I have with wikis as well; there is often a big push for documenting everything initially, but then it becomes a dumping ground for things and eventually ends up unmaintained.
If you have a wiki, you need to assign a primary maintainer / editor who keeps the contents up to date. This also applies to Notion btw. And that role needs to be passed down and around.
A big issue with a lot of engineering teams is an over-eagerness to keep adding tools and processes without setting their governance in stone. It has to be done in an afternoon at most, then "thrown over the fence" for "the team" to maintain. But nothing works like that.
Don't add a tool if you're not planning on maintaining it.
> Does advanced search help P2s retain their discoverability
In my experience that's a strong yes, that works really well. I've been able to get helpful context on previous projects from a few years ago with none of the people still around just by search across all our P2s.
P2 is way more like Hacker News than it is like wiki.
The threaded/nested comment system is a huge part of how we use P2s to communicate, jam on ideas, and frankly - also provide critical feedback.
Just like on HN, one comment deep in the thread can be way more valuable than the original post.
(I work at Automattic)
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