Piece of mind on everything - and then some
There's a time and place for everything. But everything is changing. Hopefully, time and place will shift along. As for me: I'll try. New technology enables us to do more with less effort in less time. The catch is in the temptation to focus on quantity rather than quality, quick wins, or even stuff that's really unethical or illegal when you stop to think about it.
Yes, I use easy-to-maintain blogs for publishing and social media for my shorter brainfarts, but I still craft my writings. Finding the proper words, finetune the bits and pieces, think it over as a whole, until it's exactely like I ment it to.
That's how I always did it, and that's what I'll keep doing. Unpublish or republish if necessary. Why? Short version: because I think it's worth it. Long version: because I think it's worth it, and here's why.
Many things I used to publish on my personal website (in Dutch, I might add) now have a place elsewhere and in some ways what was left there seemed obsolete. I was about to pull the plug and reconsider this site as a whole, when I read an inspiring article on (among other things) 'motives to publish' from Marlin Mann: Free as in "Me".
Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups
He gave a piece of his mind as a result of what he describes as "the increasingly popular practice of re-publishing someone’s online work on another site without the attribution, formatting, and linking that many bloggers regard as standard, ethical, and fair".
His story evolves around the fact that someone re-publishing your content assumes you'll be grateful for granting you a little publicity. Wich in turn is based on yet another assumption: that traffic is what it's all about (for anyone, publishing anything). But that's not everybody's holy grail. Both that and the price ain't exactly "free" as in beer.
Quality visitors over the quantity
Now I'll admit to enjoying my fair share of attention just as much as the next guy, but it's not what drives me in the end. It's not a purpose on it's own. Melin explains a little something about what drives him to publish stuff - and I recognise a lot of what he writes there. It's not so much about attention, as it is about respect, I guess.
I'm not in it for the views or the money. I happen just to like to share some stuff with the world, like there's many of "us" out there who do. Stuff I've observed, researched or otherwise figured out and in general: felt like sharing. Because I think it's worth writing about.
As for the pageviews: I'd rather have a few visitors how actually care to take effort in reading the lengthy full piece of mind I have to offer, then a whole bunch of them who don't.
That does not limit the subjects
Does it have to? Tumblr-developer Marco wrote about how he started "feeling obligated to raise the average quality of what I post and stay within the bounds of what people expect me to write about" after gathering a crowd of readers (he refuses to, and I can't blame him for it).
And while I don't need a crowd to have issues with "raising the quality", it's quite clear how 'having a crowd' can raise all sorts of expectations towards an author (or make him/her feel that way).
The cliché answer is probably to "stay true to your goal" - but many blogs (like mine) don't have a definite purpose other than "write" (for the process and sake of it) and "share", obviously. So in the end, I guess it all comes down to being true to yourself and to what drives in the first place?
