I'm tempted to make a group blog

Writing is fun, and I like sharing my thoughts to the world. Though it does sometimes get a bit lonely talking into the void. I’ve thought of making some kind of AT Protocol-powered commenting system, but that only solves some of the issue. Comments are just a small part of interacting with ideas.

I like to share my posts with my friends. I think they read them, but few say much about it—presumably because the subject matter isn’t really up their alley. I do write about awfully niche things…

I think another part of it is that I also wish I could interact with other people’s thoughts, too. None of my friends have blogs, so I can’t actually read about the stuff they’re thinking about or doing. There’s nothing I could ever respond to.

The Internet is kind of a wild west. If I interacted with a random person, I feel like I could accidentally say something I shouldn’t because I don’t really know them too well. I know my friends a lot better, and I would be interested in starting some kind of group blog where we can post stuff and respond to each other seriously, without as much risk of it becoming some big drama or whatever. We know each other, and we know we mean well.

Ideally it’s like having “intellectually serious” (or really, just earnest) discussion about the things we like (though I’d love to see random introspection too). Our thought process happens in public, and we all have an excellent opportunity to challenge each other’s thinking and change. It won’t really be a traditional publication with editors or a house style; maybe some light governance around explicit authorship and other things to address challenges I’m sure it would face.

Well, okay, maybe I lied about there being no “house style.” I do want to set the tone of this group blog to be one of plainspokenness, transparency about uncertainty,^[1] and writing to think (instead of writing for mass appeal). It is not a place for you to try and win arguments at all costs like social media, I want it to be a place where you can think aloud and talk about it with peers who will give their thoughts and not judge. Write what you want—a detailed, heavily researched argumentative piece or a small introspective piece; you aren’t constrained in your expression.

One concern I have though is that one person is more prolific in their writing than everyone else, and drowns out all of the other voices (likely me if I’m the one starting this whole thing…). Or that people start writing for what they think belongs on the publication rather than what they actually think. Maybe they would fear being one dissenting opinion and getting dog-piled on. I don’t know how to address these, because it seems like a matter of the publication culture (though maybe the first issue could be addressed by some kind of publishing schedule… but I also don’t want something like that to be too overbearing, so it would need to be very carefully designed).

And how do I expect people to respond to posts about subjects they know nothing about? Perhaps we don’t always need to emphasize always responding with full posts about the same subject to every post. Maybe it could be more emphasis on what a post made you think. That could help connect ideas across subjects, even if you don’t quite know the material. Cross-domain thinking, how noble; reminds me of Obsidian already.

There’s also how it would be technically implemented. There are some friends I have who I’m sure would more appreciative of not having to work with Jekyll or GitHub or any kind of coding. Maybe they could submit their works to me and I could merge it in, but this is awkward and could risk turning me into some kind of gatekeeper.

Ugh, governance and group work is hard. Friends, DM me if you’re even remotely interested.