I haven’t read either post, but maybe this problem reduces partly to more technical posts getting less views, and thus less karma? One problem with even great technical posts is that very few readers can evaluate that such a post is indeed great. And if you can’t tell whether a post is accurate, then it can feel irresponsible to upvote it. Even if your technical post is indeed great, it’s not clear that a policy of “upvote all technical posts I can’t judge myself” would make great technical posts win in terms of karma.
A second issue I’m just noticing is that the first post contains lots of text-heavy screenshots, and that has a bunch of downsides for engagement. Like, the blue font in the first screenshot is very small and thus hard to read. I read stuff in a read-it-later app (called Readwise Reader), incl. with text-to-speech, and neither the app nor the TTS work great with such images. Also, such images usually don’t respect dark mode on either LW or other apps. You can’t use LW’s inline quote comments. And so on and so forth. Screenshots work better in a presentation, but not particularly well in a full essay.
Another potential issue is that the first post doesn’t end on “Tell me what you think” (= invites discussion and engagement), but rather with a Thanks section (does anyone ever read those?) and then a huge skimmable section of Full screenshots.
I’m also noticing that the LW version of the first post is lacking the footnotes from the Substack version.
EDIT: And the title for the second post seems way better. Before clicking on either post, I have an idea what the second one is about, and none whatsoever what the first one is about. So why would I even click on the latter? Would the readers you’re trying to reach with that post even know what you mean by “mapping discussions”?
EDIT2: And when I hear “process”, I think of mandated employee trainings, not of software solutions, so the title is misleading to me, too. Even “A new website for mapping discussions” or “We built a website for mapping discussions” would already sound more accurate and interesting to me, though I still wouldn’t know what the “mapping discussions” part is about.
I haven’t read either post, but maybe this problem reduces partly to more technical posts getting less views, and thus less karma? One problem with even great technical posts is that very few readers can evaluate that such a post is indeed great. And if you can’t tell whether a post is accurate, then it can feel irresponsible to upvote it. Even if your technical post is indeed great, it’s not clear that a policy of “upvote all technical posts I can’t judge myself” would make great technical posts win in terms of karma.
A second issue I’m just noticing is that the first post contains lots of text-heavy screenshots, and that has a bunch of downsides for engagement. Like, the blue font in the first screenshot is very small and thus hard to read. I read stuff in a read-it-later app (called Readwise Reader), incl. with text-to-speech, and neither the app nor the TTS work great with such images. Also, such images usually don’t respect dark mode on either LW or other apps. You can’t use LW’s inline quote comments. And so on and so forth. Screenshots work better in a presentation, but not particularly well in a full essay.
Another potential issue is that the first post doesn’t end on “Tell me what you think” (= invites discussion and engagement), but rather with a Thanks section (does anyone ever read those?) and then a huge skimmable section of Full screenshots.
I’m also noticing that the LW version of the first post is lacking the footnotes from the Substack version.
EDIT: And the title for the second post seems way better. Before clicking on either post, I have an idea what the second one is about, and none whatsoever what the first one is about. So why would I even click on the latter? Would the readers you’re trying to reach with that post even know what you mean by “mapping discussions”?
EDIT2: And when I hear “process”, I think of mandated employee trainings, not of software solutions, so the title is misleading to me, too. Even “A new website for mapping discussions” or “We built a website for mapping discussions” would already sound more accurate and interesting to me, though I still wouldn’t know what the “mapping discussions” part is about.