A bad X is better than none | Andros Fenollosa

It is important that the knowledge we generate, whether experiences, opinions or solutions, does not get lost. We want to leave a mark for future reference and future generations. I think we can all agree that this is healthy for humanity to keep moving forward. However, the effort of building the internet, of creating spaces of wisdom that last for decades, is being diluted. If you don't believe me, let me pass you the ball: which platform do you write on the most? With the answer in hand: what would happen if that server, thread, subreddit or group shut down? It would most likely be lost, and nobody could benefit from that knowledge, not even you. This is not hypothetical: when Yahoo closed GeoCities in 2009, millions of personal pages vanished, and when Google pulled the plug on Google+ in 2019, years of conversations from entire communities disappeared. Only what the Archive Team volunteers managed to rescue against the clock survived. And here is an even more worrying question, one that completely breaks the open web: do you think that information can be read without an account?

I am not saying there is any malice involved, just comfort and the inertia that comes with our nature. We love to brag about using free software, or an open source operating system, but then we lock our knowledge and opinions away in closed platforms with an entry barrier, no hierarchy, no control and an expiration date. I recommend reading Discord servers are walled gardens by Siyang Sun, where he digs deeper into the subject. Think about it: if the developers of the Linux kernel, Debian, or any free software project that comes to mind, had used a platform like Slack, Telegram, Discord, X, etc. to debate and share knowledge, we would have lost decades of computing history by now.

I understand that walled gardens, or private platforms, are comfortable. You can share, debate and read documentation without setting up any infrastructure, with a super fancy smartphone app. Besides, all your friends are already there, and you will probably get a quick answer. Here I would like to mention the famous article by Terence Eden, Discord is not Documentation, where he shares his personal experience. I am not trying to write a sequel to his article, but to encourage you to prioritize the permanence of knowledge over the neon lights of private platforms.

Now that you understand the problem, let's see how we can improve the situation.

A bad blog is better than none

You have control over your content, you can share it on other platforms and, most importantly, it is indexable and can be consulted over time. Don't hesitate to include an open comment system, or store the comments yourself. In my case, I receive comments by email, at a special address with an article id, and a cron job publishes them on the blog.

On the other hand, there are static site generators of all shapes and colors. If you don't want to complicate your life you can go for a CMS like WordPress, Ghost, Drupal, etc. If you want to go one level lower, there is the Gemini protocol, where you write in Gemtext.

And if you also offer the option of reading your articles in plain text or markdown with some header, you will earn yourself a place in developer heaven. For example, you can read this very article in markdown from your terminal:

curl -H "Accept: text/markdown" https://en.andros.dev/blog/cdc5a0bc/a-bad-x-is-better-than-none/<br>You will find the full instructions in llms.txt.

Microblogging social networks, like Mastodon, are not a substitute for a blog, but they are a good complement for visibility and debate. They could actually replace a traditional blog if you self-hosted one (like GoToSocial, Pleroma, etc.) and enabled search engine indexing. However, the effort of running a simple blog is minimal and the result is much more solid.

Don't get lost in the technology, create content and share it. And if you still have doubts, I recommend reading Why you should have a blog (and write in it) by Leticia Portella.

A bad forum (or mailing list) is better than none

Mailing lists are the present of the big free software projects. In fact, now that I think about it, they are where I end up spending most of my time debating and reading. I have met wonderful people thanks to them. And it makes perfect sense. They are hard to replace since they don't depend on a specific provider, the infrastructure is minimal, the content gets copied into the mailboxes of every participant, and HTML mirrors can be generated so anyone can read them. As I said in my introduction, thanks to them we have records of how different projects have evolved.

Of course, there are friendlier web options, such as Discourse, Flarum or the veteran phpBB. However, the effort is not in the software or the format, but in the community that sustains it: organizing, moderating, maintaining and giving visibility to the threads.

Discussion forums are the only...