In reply to Challenges of fragmented writing by Lilia Efimova
I recognise what you say. The multilingualism, the ‘going where the intended readership is’ vs shouting into the void on my blog, the friction due to fragmentation.
I think over the past 2-3 years I’ve made a few steps that have helped me reduce that friction and fragmentation.
The first element is that my site has become much more of a central point. I use it to post to Twitter and Mastodon, and responses there get fetched and added to my blogposts. It doesn’t work for Facebook, they’ve locked up their silo, then again I no longer have an account there either. Cross-posting from my blog to such services allows me to reach out to those who ‘live’ there, while still have my own unified view of the things I posted and the responses it got. I can both share my posts on Twitter, as well as have a category I use to send messages to Twitter, that otherwise don’t show up on my website, except to me.
I’ve created a way to post in multiple languages here in my blog that doesn’t amount to having walled off sections. It’s just all there in the same place, but who wants can separate out selected streams to follow. The main RSS feed simply holds everything but I added things like machine translation links to non-English blogposts in my feed.
I haven’t yet come upon an idea to easily and reliably create different levels of access for certain types of posts, or certain types of information within posts, which like you I would enjoy to have here. I do post things that never appear on the front page (meaning, like you blogged a long time ago, you have to make an effort to discover more), and I also post things that only show up in RSS, and remain unlisted in the site itself. As RSS readers are a self-selected separate readership, I can treat that as ‘posting to my blogger network’, while it isn’t public on my site.
The second key element is that I rearranged my PKM system in such a way that all of my offline writing is now in a single place (basically text files for which I use Obsidian as viewer).
Everything that catches my eye flows into it, as well as my own processing, connecting, and writing takes place there.
The step that I’m building now is that what I write there can automagically flow to the channels where I share such things (eg my book reading, and soon postings themselves). My site again is/will be the conduit for it, as it can also post to other channels. I also run 2 other websites for clients straight from my notes (when I update my own local notes on EU data regulations, the client site updates).
Obviously there is still a lot to wish for too, mostly in the area of granular access and disclosure.
..on getting back to writing, I struggle with cross-platform issues. […] At the moment I have no idea how to put it all in a system that works
Lilia Efimova
Thank you for writing this, Ton. Although I hardly comment on your blog I am here quite a lot a see your long-term systematic investment into creating a knowledge ecosystem that flows between personal processes, documenting, and social interaction. From where I am now that looks like a mountain range that I need to cross if I want to get somewhere. I know quite well where some of the problems are, but I have no idea how to gather resources to work on them. In a sense, I am where many non-bloggers were when we were early adopters – in need of pragmatic advice and help instead of exploring possibilities and DIY solutions.
So, back to you blog ecosystem. Do you have something written on low-hanging fruits, plugins or small changes that bring noticeable differences to start with? Do you have a list of WP addons/plugins you use? Do you know someone who can help with either a pragmatic plan on the sequence of WP changes to start with or rehauling WP for my requirements?
Ton Zijlstra mentioned this article on zylstra.org.