Blogging and microblogging
Jan. 15th, 2023 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mjg59Long-term Linux users may remember that Alan Cox used to write an online diary. This was before the concept of a "Weblog" had really become a thing, and there certainly weren't any expectations around what one was used for - while now blogging tends to imply a reasonably long-form piece on a specific topic, Alan was just sitting there noting small life concerns or particular technical details in interesting problems he'd solved that day. For me, that was fascinating. I was trying to figure out how to get into kernel development, and was trying to read as much LKML as I could to figure out how kernel developers did stuff. But when you see discussion on LKML, you're frequently missing the early stages. If an LKML patch is a picture of an owl, I wanted to know how to draw the owl, and most of the conversations about starting in kernel development were very "Draw two circles. Now draw the rest of the owl". Alan's musings gave me insight into the thought processes involved in getting from "Here's the bug" to "Here's the patch" in ways that really wouldn't have worked in a more long-form medium.
For the past decade or so, as I moved away from just doing kernel development and focused more on security work instead, Twitter's filled a similar role for me. I've seen people just dumping their thought process as they work through a problem, helping me come up with effective models for solving similar problems. I've learned that the smartest people in the field will spend hours (if not days) working on an issue before realising that they misread something back at the beginning and that's helped me feel like I'm not unusually bad at any of this. It's helped me learn more about my peers, about my field, and about myself.
Twitter's now under new ownership that appears to think all the worst bits of Twitter were actually the good bits, so I've mostly bailed to the Fediverse instead. There's no intrinsic length limit on posts there - Mastodon defaults to 500 characters per post, but that's configurable per instance. But even at 500 characters, it means there's more room to provide thoughtful context than there is on Twitter, and what I've seen so far is more detailed conversation and higher levels of meaningful engagement. Which is great! Except it also seems to discourage some of the posting style that I found so valuable on Twitter - if your timeline is full of nuanced discourse, it feels kind of rude to just scream "THIS FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT IGNORES THE HIGH ADDRESS BIT ON EVERY OTHER WRITE" even though that's exactly the sort of content I'm there for.
And, yeah, not everything has to be for me. But I worry that as Twitter's relevance fades for the people I'm most interested in, we're replacing it with something that's not equivalent - something that doesn't encourage just dropping 50 characters or so of your current thought process into a space where it can be seen by thousands of people. And I think that's a shame.
For the past decade or so, as I moved away from just doing kernel development and focused more on security work instead, Twitter's filled a similar role for me. I've seen people just dumping their thought process as they work through a problem, helping me come up with effective models for solving similar problems. I've learned that the smartest people in the field will spend hours (if not days) working on an issue before realising that they misread something back at the beginning and that's helped me feel like I'm not unusually bad at any of this. It's helped me learn more about my peers, about my field, and about myself.
Twitter's now under new ownership that appears to think all the worst bits of Twitter were actually the good bits, so I've mostly bailed to the Fediverse instead. There's no intrinsic length limit on posts there - Mastodon defaults to 500 characters per post, but that's configurable per instance. But even at 500 characters, it means there's more room to provide thoughtful context than there is on Twitter, and what I've seen so far is more detailed conversation and higher levels of meaningful engagement. Which is great! Except it also seems to discourage some of the posting style that I found so valuable on Twitter - if your timeline is full of nuanced discourse, it feels kind of rude to just scream "THIS FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT IGNORES THE HIGH ADDRESS BIT ON EVERY OTHER WRITE" even though that's exactly the sort of content I'm there for.
And, yeah, not everything has to be for me. But I worry that as Twitter's relevance fades for the people I'm most interested in, we're replacing it with something that's not equivalent - something that doesn't encourage just dropping 50 characters or so of your current thought process into a space where it can be seen by thousands of people. And I think that's a shame.
Mastodon Feels Sterile.
Date: 2023-01-16 01:55 am (UTC)Re: Mastodon Feels Sterile.
Date: 2023-01-16 08:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-16 02:16 am (UTC)I believe you are missing a “fucking” somewhere. :D
I'm a very prolific writer, which means Twitter never worked for me, and I find 500 characters as limiting as whatever the Twitter limit is nowadays.
Do you really think that prevents people from posting to-the-point items?
For me, the micro-blogging limits set by Twitter is what created the terribly toxic environment in the first place. No space to argument about anything, it's better to make a cynical joke and a good ol' insult to make your point.
— Pierre
Mastodon of all surveys
Date: 2023-01-16 07:19 am (UTC)... And that, I think, is the secret of getting the most out of Mastodon.
A feature, not a bug
Date: 2023-01-16 07:32 am (UTC)You *can* say something meaningful in under 140 characters. But putting some thought into that is too hard for many users.
Re: A feature, not a bug
Date: 2023-01-16 07:59 am (UTC)Re: A feature, not a bug
Date: 2023-01-26 04:34 pm (UTC)Interesting; when I work on a bug, then stopping at each finding and capturing it in a new comment on the bugzilla ticket helps me organize my thoughts. By writing it up as carefully as I can, as if I were guiding someone else through my argument, I distill and reinvestigate my thinking process.
Furthermore, the hunt can be so divergent and multi-branched that I can't keep everything in my mind. Attaching various debug patches and related logs that can be later referred back to is useful.
Also, frequent and relatively complete comments allows for controlled interruptions; it's easier to pick up the thread the next day when there's something comprehensive to re-read.
Here's one of my early, fond memories: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750283 -- that one took a week of work or so, IIRC.
I structure patch series, and write commit messages, the same way -- guiding the reviewer through my thought process. A few months or years later, I could be the "reviewer" myself again, for those same patches; it has happened.
I've checked out some debugging threads on Twitter (the website, retroactively). There's undeniably a drama / excitement element to the format, but it tends to lack context so badly that it's never convinced me.
To each their own :)
no subject
Date: 2023-01-16 09:55 am (UTC)I deeply and fervently suggest that you post like mjg59, and your readers will welcome your important insights, which absolutely include such as "THIS FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT IGNORES THE HIGH ADDRESS BIT ON EVERY OTHER WRITE" as a standalone post.
There's way too many content cops on Mastodon. I blame the marketing as the white suburbia of social media, and mastodon.social thinking it's the HOA for the Fediverse.
no subject
Date: 2023-01-16 09:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-17 09:25 am (UTC)If you are worried about it then set up a separate "short vents" account and people can choose to follow it if they wish, or not if they don't. That way nobody has to see anything they don't want to.
hmmmm!
Date: 2023-01-16 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-23 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-25 10:36 pm (UTC)Give an opportunity to BlueSky: https://bsky.app/
Date: 2023-08-17 03:09 am (UTC)Centralized accessibility silos make not for
Date: 2024-08-22 12:17 pm (UTC)But centralized is _so_ baked into _everyone's_ mindset even many of those who embrace the alternative(s) to the inert legacy of Big Data's Web2 still build the new tools in the shape of the old ones. If common sense could understand just how valuable each and all everyone's data really is, maybe the tools would approach the implementation free of the chains of centralization...
Really, it's not _that_ difficult to figure out how to do. Some like nostr even are on the future track already!
Re: Centralized accessibility silos make not for
Date: 2024-08-22 12:21 pm (UTC)F**king unbelievable how complicit taking for granted software's become.
Anyways lol sorry not meaning to troll, just this is an awesome 'blog'. People who really understand well the specifics of what they do and write about it, sharing it with the rest of the net--like yourself, is really one of the best qualities of the internet! Definitely best reasons to 'go online'.