Forget Fear ☁ Ian Storm Taylor

Scrivs recently tweeted something that got me thinking (funny how he keeps doing that):

“Before I head out let me say that if you are looking for ideas to write on your blog or want to test an idea out Drawar Forums is the place.”

Before I start, I want to make it clear that I’m not bashing Scrivs or the Drawar Forums. Scrivs is a huge proponent for people sharing their ideas on their own blogs and he is constantly making me think, and the Drawar Forums provide a great place for discussion.

That being said, I think the last part of that tweet sums up the problem with a lot of design blogs. You shouldn’t need to “test an idea out” before you run it on your own blog. Have people forgotten that blogs are about opinions?

If you think that your posts have to be impenetrable before you can publish them on your blog, you are setting yourself up for failure. Anything you post should definitely be well thought out, but to assume that you can arrive at the irrefutable truth of a topic is naïve. Instead, explain your opinion clearly and open the discussion to others.

The way I see it, the comments sections of my own blog posts are one of the best places to learn. It is natural to be scared of what responses you will receive, but that fear shouldn’t prevent you from posting in the first place. How will you learn if you don’t solidify your ideas to begin with?

This article has 3 comments.

Scrivs
April 24th, 2010

The way I wrote it I can see where you got the idea that I mean test your ideas out by seeing how others would respond, but what I meant was helping your idea grow by gathering the opinions of others. This doesn’t apply for all blogs, but on Drawar the articles aren’t just a paragraph or two and if that’s all I have for an idea I would post it in the forums to open a discussion for others to speak on. These discussions can lead to a more complete article and more importantly offer me other viewpoints that I might have missed before.

You are correct in that you should be able to write any opinion on your own site without worrying if people are going to disagree or agree.
Ian Storm Taylor
April 24th, 2010

I’m glad you clarified your tweet Scrivs. Like I said I wasn’t taking aim at Drawar, you merely gave me the idea for this post. You make a good point about gaining the input of others (which could be done via Twitter as well); that can be very helpful to build a post up.

Thanks for the response!
meilinPR
April 27th, 2010

On principle I agree with this post, but if someone has their portfolio and their blog on the same site (as you yourself do), I can see how the pressure to write something really good can lead someone to try things out in a forum first. Customers may read your posts, even the little ones (the short posts, I mean). After all, it might be the case more people might read your post at Drawar than at your blog — the crucial difference being that none of the folks at Drawar are potential customers (I presume, from looking at the very designer-y layout).

I will stop flooding you with comments, now (heh, I was going to day this in my previous one).