Caffeinated Simpleton - Latest Comments in The Internet is Fluff

Re: The Internet is Fluff

Jason — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:28:44 -0000

I generally agree with the sentiment of this post, but I think the key concept of what is 'more valuable' is more subtle and subjective than what you are giving it credit for.
Agreed, the critical mass phenomena produces a pyramid type of effect in the dissemination and accessibility of information, but sometimes that seems to form part of a bigger picture in how things are developed and shared in society.
The nature of the internet really highlights and accentuates these processes, and I think sometimes distorts expectations of how humans can and do consume information.

Re: The Internet is Fluff

justin — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:11:10 -0000

Glad I could help :)

Re: The Internet is Fluff

Matt Grommes — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:55:19 -0000

I think sites like Reddit are a step away from how you're describing things. Since it's about other people passing along links, it doesn't matter if you're the first or not, just that you had a good enough post for people to want to pass along. I know I found your git post on Reddit and since I'm interested in git, I read it. I wasn't searching for anything but I still found that post. I could have been looking for Javascript stuff and found one of your other links on Reddit.

As it is, I'm glad I found your git post since I didn't know about git-svn and now I'm able to use git at work.

Re: The Internet is Fluff

justin — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:19:08 -0000

Hmm, I must have not done a very good job of writing this post, as everybody
seems to be misunderstanding it.

Of course people care more about some things than others, but the point is
that the more valuable contribution is the one that is harder to find (in my
opinion). It's regrettable.

Re: The Internet is Fluff

ein2015 — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:42:44 -0000

Could it be possible that simply more people care about version control systems than javascript?

I happened to be reading up on people's opinions about git and why they choose git, which is how I stumbled upon your blog.

However, I agree with your desire for the semantic web. At the very least it would do a better job of connecting people with what they want to know.

Re: The Internet is Fluff

justin — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:52:13 -0000

I agree, but that's not the issue. Articles about more popular topics are
always going to be more popular. If I wrote about celebrity gossip, I might
be able to get 5x the traffic. The point is that the more useful information
is lost because of the inherent weakness of search engines: they are based
on popularity. Popularity has proven to be a good metric, but not the only
metric. How we begin to take more metrics into account will be very
interesting, I think.

Re: The Internet is Fluff

Brett — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:40:58 -0000

Well, part of the popularity of your git post is that it's about distributed version control systems. I did a post comparing Mercurial to Bazaar many months ago and it is still the top entry on my blog. It's enough of a hot button topic that once you get some exposure and higher in the Google rankings the traffic just inherently spikes.

Re: The Internet is Fluff

Richard Pinneau — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 07:29:16 -0000

You're touching on a phenomenon that I find quite distressing: the movement of (all?) mass media to the lowest common denominator.
One of the interest-delimited solutions is specialized systems like hacker news (ycombinator) - which is where I first found link to your post.
In the web as a whole there a trumping of quality by quantity. Therefore wide-open sites (reddit comes to mind) lose their interest for specialists.
Yet there *is* a value to page-visits by "quality" (i.e., non-general-public) web surfers.
With time systems will be developed to tap that market. (hope, hope). Thanks for the post.