Definitive guides vs articles every day?

#discuss #webdev #healthydebate

Hi, everyone

Would you like to read an article every day or get a complete guide that covers a lot of articles but gets right to the point?

So what is your take on this:

more articles?
fewer articles but more value in a single read?

Thanks in advance for all the participants to this discussion

Top comments (11)

Ben Halpern • May 23 '20

I think as a content consumer, and someone who has thought a lot about this in organizing DEV, I think folks need both, because we essentially learn by immersion and need to be exposed to different angles to get a big picture.

More articles means you can address more specific topics and gain a pulse with your audience, definitive guides have a better chance at reaching many, many folks and having a singularly huge impact. So with that I'd probably lean towards whichever of these models fits your style as an author best.

wolfiton • May 23 '20

Thanks @benhalpern for sharing your opinion on this subject.
I agree with what you are saying to some point but at the same time I think that authors don't have a single style.

They can have a lot of different ways to offer information to their readers using long or short articles and every author is an educator that needs to offer value and interact with the readers of his or her article to understand what value they can bring with their work to the whole community.

So as a conclusion, I think authors will need to adapt to what the readers want and find easy ways to teach others about what they write no matter the format of the article they use.

🦄N B🛡 • May 23 '20 • Edited

adapt to what the readers want

Careful what you wish for.

You might find out that "the readers," by and large, behave as though they want a slightly longer form version of Twitter & Buzzfeed that happens to have markdown (for now).

wolfiton • May 24 '20 • Edited

Why not half of the project for free half for money as a course. I think it could be an interesting course that can teach us all a lot.

Thanks @🦄N B🛡 for suggesting this idea

Dallas DeGrendel • May 24 '20

Create = Guides
Observe = Articles

Guides should be part of your greater plan, articles are your ruminations and what you see that sparks your interest.

Guides should as long as you need to clearly explain your concept. If you think it's too long, you probably try to cram to much.

wolfiton • May 24 '20

In my case, I only think if I provided enough value for the reader.

Thanks, @DallasDeGrendel for sharing your opinion here. I

I really appreciated that you also shared your experience.

Dallas DeGrendel • May 24 '20

I love how much programmers share, but I think our industry throws away way too much interpersonal knowledge.

Everyone has their own thing. DEV is brilliant, but it is maybe too vast for really technical stuff.

The hard stuff can be found on Stack, but google is less interested in finding relevant content as they are tightening their grip on our lives and their grip on the flow of information, what you want is on page 8 because it's a rare issue and ranked low until 2 release cycles later.

When a dev has a hard problem to solve, it disappears right after.

That is the issue. Solution is still being concepted out.

🦄N B🛡 • May 23 '20 • Edited

Definitive guides are more important, and have more impact in the long run, especially if the topic is chosen well.

For instance, a guide on "Nomad with Apache Mesos and HAProxy" might be a little too specific, but a more general guide on any one of those specific tools, or on "Open Source Load Balancers in Container Orchestration Systems," would give people value for years.

Now, to make the debate a little less healthy, I think we all know you're going to get more eyeballs on short how-to articles with catchy titles. So do those.