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A New Home, Same Purposes
Iām done putting the final touches to my new home, a place where I continue sharing my newsletter and publish new posts under the Friday Notes and Photo Legend Series. Instead of using Substack, Iām now on Ghost(Pro). And I love it! I hope you stay with me in this transition.
Considering bookmarking this link: https://numericcitizen-introspection.blog or adding it to your favourite RSS reader: https://numericcitizen-introspection.blog/rss/.
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Like the Dislike ā Put the Decision in Creatorās Hands
So, YouTube will remove the dislike button soon from its platform. In one of his recent video, the popular YouTuber, Marques Brownlee, expresses his dissatisfaction about Googleās decision. His view echos mine. Iām not a big consumer of YouTube content, but when I do spend time there, I want to spend it on good quality content. The like / dislike ratio is an important indicator for me, and I suspect it is for many people.
We heard during the experiment that some of you have used the public dislike count to help decide whether or not to watch a video. We know that you might not agree with this decision, but we believe that this is the right thing to do for the platform.
I think the content creators should play a bigger role in all this: let them decide. The same way a blogger can turn off the comment section at the end of each blog post, peopleās reactions on each video could be turned off by the authorās decision. In fact, I would argue that the ultimate decision to allow likes and dislikes should be held by the content creators. Simple as that. Make it an opt-in or opt-out default, but put the decision in creatorās hands. I would go as far as saying that the counters could stay private to the author if he or she decides so.
To me, one of the best rewarding indicator is the one that shows how far users are watching videos. They may agree or disagree, but as soon as they watch most of it, anything else is irrelevant.
I wonder if this decision by YouTube better serves their interests. I mean, without any ratio indicator, users have no choice but to start to play the video to decide if it is worth the time. This simple change makes people spend more time on the platform. Or is it the other way around and users will instead look at the comments to get a better idea of the video quality? I doubt it, as reading takes too much time to decide. People are busy, their attention span is short, a quick glance at the like dislike ratio is the way to go.
Once the decision to let people react to a video is made, then the platform could finally make it available only if the user watch āmost ofā the video. That no rocket science. There are probably other tricks that could be played to better control whatās going on in userās reactions. But at this stage, it seems closer to be only implementation details.
As for the creatorās mental health issue, again, I would argue that if they tend to rely too much on the likes to feel rewarded, they could turn off the option. Thatās something that could help others in dealing with this.
Glass, a photo sharing service, didnāt provide a like button from day one and doesnāt plan to add one. Is it good? Well, it depends. One thing is clear, from the comments Iām seeing posted by others, I have to ask myself: what is the difference between getting dozens of āI love itā or hitting the ālikeā button? Not much.
Photo credit: Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash
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Here is my Sunday so farā¦ how is yours going?
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Got Things Done This Week
Iām feeling pretty happy again this week-end as I managed to do everything that I was sitting in my bloggerās to do list (which is setup every Sunday in Craft). What youāre seeing in my summary newsletter here is only part of my content creator story.
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Iāve been experimenting with something in recent weeks. Each Sunday, I open Craft and switch to the calendar view and create my todo list for the upcoming week. I love this. It it because Iām checking off most of the items on the list? Probably. Hereās last week plan.
Not bad. Now, letās prepare the upcoming week. š§š§š»āš»
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Hey guys! I’m still around! Been busy on Twitter recently, using Typefully. I’m still in love with Micro.blog even though I’m publishing less from here. I’m reading my timeline from time to time and I’m happy to report that it’s still a vibrant community. Keep it up!
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Am I missing Notion? @notionhq @craftsdocsapp
Been thinking about Notion recently. Before using Craft, I was a fan of Notion. I spent a few moments today on Notion to make some cleanup. I think Iām still a fan. Craft feels better for me as a writer tool. Yet, Notion is features rich. They keep improving it. I donāt know if they do it at a faster pace than Craft. They are certainly more mature. The team behind Craft being smaller, they donāt have the same resources. Many features are missing. But there is something to it that is missing in Notion. Craft being native on the Mac (itās a Catalyst app), it makes a big difference. Anyway, Iāll keep an eye on Notion. Who knows if Iāll come back.
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Dear @Viticci, Iām Not a Professional Reviewer, So What?
This podcast episode from MacStories featuring Viticci triggered quite a few reactions. Why? Because of these two sentences in the first moments of the episode talking about the iPad mini:
āYou wouldnāt want to read/or watch a review by someone who is not a professional reviewer. It wouldnāt be enjoyable.ā
Yep. Viticci said that. In āThe value of a non-reviewerās perspectiveā from Mere Civilian:
āI agree, a review from a person who does not write for a living may not be enjoyable. However, I strongly disagree with the first sentence. ā
What? Really? Then, I read this reaction from Lee Peterson on his blog:
āMacStories posts some great stuff but not everyone wants to read long articles, some like smaller easy to digest articles from independent writers, I like to think I do that here. I get to the point and try to respect my audiences time, does that make my opinion invalid or not enjoyable?ā
And here is my response. Viticci comments make him look full of himself. Period. Iām happy for him if he can live from writing reviews. I would rather read review from real end-users because the point is to get comments and observations from real use case scenarios. Sure, I like reviews from Marques Brownlee because he has well-balanced and critical point of views on a lot of stuff. It also touches the subject of what makes someone a blogger or a writer. If you write constantly, then you are a writer. Are you Shakespeare? Probably not. There is a starting point for everyone. Some will fall along the road, others will thrive. I tend to think of reviews by professionnel reviewers as synthetic reviews, where there is a lot of speed and feed talk. At some point, we want to go beyond that and have comments coming from experience. So, sure, Iād like to read comments from pilots about the real usefulness of the iPad mini. They are the one who can make a judgment on the subject.
Last year I wrote āIām not an audiophile, but here are my thoughts on Appleās AirPods Maxā which is not of āreviewā but a collection of observations. I concluded with this:
āSo, do I like the sound quality of my AirPods Max? Yes. Do they sound better than my Bose QC25? Yes. By a wide margin compared with the price difference with my Bose Q25? No. But, hey, they are wireless, convenient, comfier, have transparency mode, spatial audio and they fit within Appleās walled garden.ā
Is there any value in this? I think so. Should Viticci care? Certainly not. I do have genuine thoughts and opinions, and this is my ultimate right to share them with the world for exactly what they are: thoughts and observations. Nothing more, nothing less.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
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A typical month on Substack
Five publications each month. Four Friday notes posts, one monthly newsletter. Some new subscribers. No comments. A lot of fun at writing and publishing these posts. I’m writing for myself. I don’t feel the pressure of regular writing schedules. It’s easier than I thought. The more I do it, easier it becomes. Substack is a slowly evolving publishing platform. I wish it was a bit more like Twitter’s Revue. Anyways. https://numericcitizen.substack.com.
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I spend between 4 to 5 hours each month to put together my Numeric Citizen Introspection newsletter.
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Decided to put everything I read online through @Pocket. Highlights are synced to my @Readwiseio account, and I share a lot of them with comments on my Pocket page here. Feel free to follow me there.
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I’m trying something new, again. I’m testing Revue, by Twitter. What I found is quite interesting, from a Substack user perspective. You can read all about it here, on Revue. Tell me what’s your impressions.
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Feeling honored
It doesnāt happen too often but when it does, I feel very proud about it. One of my blog post about the story of 1Password 8 going ElectronĀ on https://numericcitizen.me received a backlink from Michael Tsai (look for āJF Martinā and youāll see the excerpt).
Mr. Tsai does a tremendous work with his link posts in general. I can imagine how much work he puts into this each day.I would love to have a peek at his blogger workflow.
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Doing all the things I love
After an emotional week-end, long in coming, today I’m doing all the things I love the most: doing computer stuff ā writing in a coffee shop ā feeling like a real blogger ā doing some photo processing ā walking ā biking. I know time will fly.
Life is good. Those days are so rare. I’m enjoying every single minutes of it. Work resumes tomorrow.
Photo by karl chor on Unsplash
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I Love This Machine
It is light, fast and an absolute design gem. Small, but not too small. It runs a powerful operating system. Itās highly portable. It is venerable. It is a rare āspeciesā. There is something really special about it. Furthermore, it has a real keyboard that I can trust. Battery life is good. It is out of the way. Itās the perfect device for writing and blogging.
Itās a 2013 11ā MacBook Air.
Iāll explain in the coming week or so.
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Itās always saddening me a bit when, on the day of a new issue of my newsletter is being published, a few people decide to unscubscribe. I know, I cannot please everyone, people are busy, etc. And yetā¦ š oh well. š¤·š»āāļø
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I’m mostly done with the latest issue of my Numeric Citizen Introspection newsletter. It’s been a year since I started this free monthly newsletter and I still love it. While waiting for the next issue tomorrow, why not give a look at the previous one here. Subscribe, it’s free!
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I wish I could have used Ā«Ā Digital CitizenĀ Ā» instead of Ā«Ā Numeric CitizenĀ Ā». Oh well. Itās a branding issue, nothing serious.
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A few thoughts on cleaning up my Twitter accounts following list
Since last year, Iāve been making a major cleanup of my Twitter account. I came from following more than 2000 people down to less than 300ā¦ and my goal is to drop below 100. Iām slowly getting there. Here are a few take outs from this major cleanup of my accounts following list.
First, there are a lot of stale accounts on Twitter, which tends to artificially increase āfollowshipā. It looks like people stopped tweeting a while ago ā they left the building. Second, a bunch of accounts were iPhone developers that I started following during my indie developer era, back in 2009-2013. My interests have since then shifted to writing and blogging. I no longer need to get in touch with the developers community. Third, and this coud be the most troubling take out: Twitter has become less and less useful in my numeric life. Articles readings happens more and more though RSS feeds and Mailbrew. So, whatās left for me from Twitter? Getting reactions from people during specials events, related to Appleās announcements. Thatās pretty much it.
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Iāve been experimenting with time tracking. I’ve been doing it as an experiment at first, but now it’s part of my workflow. I’m using Toggl and Timery. Ask me anything.
