Quite early on, while starting this journey, I realized perfection is not achievable as a blogger.
It has many reasons:
- Tech stacks evolve
- People have opinions
- There are multiple correct ways
- There are multiple wrong ways
- Scenarios can be different
- Context might be missing
While writing an article, which is static, you can include information that some people deem a mistake.
So how should we address these "mistakes"?
I tend to address them early on. It could include a specific version of the system the article is written for.
It could include a disclaimer that there are multiple ways of doing it, and this is just one of them.
I try not to get involved for opinions while writing an article about React for instance. Someone might address it and say Vue can do the same thing better.
It might be true or false, but it's opinionated. And not what the article was about in the first place.
So I thank the person for their comment and leave it there.
What about making actual mistakes?
We should not be scared to fail, and I love to believe my blog/writing is not a set-in-stone article.
When people tell me I made a mistake that can happen, I investigate and address it.
Often this results in writing a secondary essay explaining the mistake I made and how I solved it.
But you influence people?
This is, for me, the most challenging part. Yes, people read my blog and might be influenced by what I write.
But then again, is it expected always to write the perfect scenario?
Again, think about the reasons mentioned above. It might not even be wrong, but it is just missing some specific context not handled in this article.
And as always, I love to challenge people to try and find the best solution, not by reading one article or using one source.
But by trying it, looking further, reading some more.
This will eventually give you a better understanding of what works for your scenario.
What do you think?
The main reason for writing this article is to get a conversation going.
What do you think about content creators making these "mistakes"?
Are they ok, or should every piece of content be absolute?
Thank you for reading, and let's connect!
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Top comments (12)
If you find factual errors in your articles, there are two ways to handle them once found:
I would suggest route 1 for smaller errors and route 2 for larger updates.
Yeah, I've been using those two exactly like that.
Rewrite if the whole essence has changed over time, or it's too big to change
And change the small sub fixes.
How do you feel about content-writers making these mistakes?
We're all humans. All the difference we can make is learning from mistakes, be it our own or someone else's. Generally the latter is preferable, because you're not going to live long enough to make all of them yourself.
In my opinion mistakes are the best way to learn to code.No programmer has ever written a programe without failing.And the next time you get the same error you will be able to understand and fix the problem quickly
100% agreed, the only way to improve and learn
I constantly feel this tension which is why I probably over-research and takes me so long to get something together 😅
I think this highlights the importance of, if possible, collecting feedback from peers prior to publishing. Lots of benefits:
Ultimately, comments are feedback, so it's just about shifting that left to improve the initial quality of what most people will see.
Yeah 100% Timothy.
I tried to work as your first point, but I was asking people for feedback, where person A would say write A and person B would say no write B.
(More in terms of how to word things)
That's when I decided to just publish and alter mistakes on the go.
Thanks for your feedback, appreciate your view on this 💖
Are lives on the lin?
No lives on the line, but some people might make you feel like that.
I failed so many times. I cannot count that. But still this is life and the nature of all things. Without the environment of failure there won’t be space to success
Yep no success without failure
In my view, it would depend on the kind of mistake. If we're talking about mistakes in general, no writer is immune to it. In my many years of writing, I have made few minor mistakes too (mostly some API or code snippets not working the way it's supposed to). When readers encounter them, they bring it to my attention in the comments section, or over email. My response is to always thank them and make edits to the article.
If the mistakes are trivial, then it's okay. But if there's a major mistake or flaw w.r.t the very fundamentals of how something works, or logical errors/fallacies, or strawmanning, then my feeling is that the author should have spent more time in research before embarking to write the article, and also should consider proof-reading to ensure that they do not happen again.
I've seen more of this happening in web3 / blockchain puff-pieces lately - for instance claims such as cryptocurrencies are great investments because blockchains are unhackable - and this tells me that the author is coming to conclusions without doing their due diligence and research. I personally find it hard to be okay with such mistakes.
If it's an opinionated piece, it also helps to put some disclaimer along the lines of - "the ecosystem/circumstances might change in few years" if that isn't immediately obvious to the readers.