Notes on link blogs and more frequent blog posting
Background
I’ve really been focusing on developing a daily writing habit. As a result, I’ve been actively generating ideas on how to more frequently publish blog content. My biggest mental hurdle for turning posts around is a deeply embedded feeling that every piece of writing I produce needs to be polished prose, and everything included needs to be absent of error.
Links and thoughts on link blogging
I recently came across this quote from an interview with Simon Willison on the Real Python podcast with Christopher Bailey (the quote is mentioned around 10m08s):
Credibility is accumulated over time, and it doesn’t take much, like a link blog about a subject run that for six months and you will become one of the top 0.1% people on earth with credibility on that subject just from publishing a few notes and linking to a bunch of things about it.
I found Willison’s statement motivating, inspiring, and a little freeing. It made me reconsider portions of my own blog and what’s their aim. This is my little corner the internet, and I set the expectations and rules of this site.
Certainly, I believe there is room for more formal, well thought-out forms of writing, like you can read in the blog section of my site. However, I also see the Today I Learned (TIL) section of my site being more like a link blog, a scratch-pad of sorts, and at times a research notebook on topics I’m learning about. Learning is a messy endeavour some times, so why does every piece of writing from it need to be tidy? It doesn’t.
Mini-blogging and open-source ecosystems
Kelli Bodwin addressed these same ideas during her posit::conf(2024) talk. The talk contained a call to action for attendees to produce more content, even if they weren’t fully formed topics or ideas. Just sharing what you’ve currently learned or are working on strengthens open-source ecosystems and makes them more sustainable. David Robinson’s Rstudio::conf(2019) keynote The unreasonable effectiveness of public work was also referenced, which I have queued up to watch later. Although I suggest listening to Bodwin’s entire talk, you can hear more about these specific ideas around 13m20s.
Who knows where these thoughts may lead. I’m still learning, which is the most important.
Reuse
Citation
@misc{berke2025,
author = {Berke, Collin K},
title = {Notes on Link Blogs and More Frequent Blog Posting},
date = {2025-01-26},
langid = {en}
}