I was thinking about it: what purpose should a blog serve?

The first thing that came to mind was:

• to keep notes worth reviewing somewhere I could easily search

But that doesn’t seem to be the main reason, since I kept workflowy open when I work, and write down questions that pop up in my mind, so that I could go back and research them properly, instead of breaking my current workflow. And workflowy is easier to index, categorise, as well as search, than a blog.

And I realise that I don’t post all the researches I’ve been doing on workflowy on my blog. The ones I post, seem to skew towards the ones that I think other people would benefit from reading. To be frank, I’d want my posts to be accessed through searches, from search engines, rather than flipped through because they’re here. I want them to be of help to someone, who’s tripped over the same problem as I did. I had plenty of help from others’ posts. It’s a place to return the favour, as in the movie Lucy, to “help contribute to our vast database of knowledge”.

Which is the reason why I purposefully didn’t leave the comment box in.

Communicating through comment sections seems to be a low efficiency way of getting ideas through. If someone doesn’t get the info s/he needs at a first glance at a blog post, a better and far quicker approach is to look somewhere else, not spending time on leaving a lengthy comment and wait for someone else to reply. Other times when comments aren’t used for asking further questions, it’s used to express disagreement, affirmation or gratitude. None of which is constructive much. If I had wanted to research something, same goes for me–it’d be better and far quicker to simply go do that damn research, rather than write a question here somewhere in a corner and expect some prince on a horse to magically turn up and give answers.

Other than that, commenting is a low threshold way to reach someone, which is also why they’re usually of low quality. People take full responsibility for a call they directly make someone, or even for a mail they directly send someone, but not so much with a comment they post on an online forum. It’s only natural–anonymity, to whatever extent, reduces responsibility. Since I believe in the quality of systems rather than individuals, it’s my responsibility, here, to create an environment that encourages the displaying of responsibility.

Therefore, it’s my wish that you contact me directly where you see fit. Feel free if you really have things to say.

Apart from those technical stuff, I share thoughts on various things that caught my interest at the time. And considering I benefited from others’ posts that fall into this category just as much as, if not more than those purely technical, I’m grateful for all people that are willing to share the contents of their brain online with the whole wide world.

I say, kudos to you all.