The conversation of ‘readme’

It used to be that when I found an article that was too long to read there and then, I would add it to delicious, tag it as ‘readme’, and hope that one day I would get around to it.

These days I just click my Kindlebility bookmarklet and read the article next time I’m on the bus or train, but still get value out of the articles that other people are posting to delicious. Am I doing them a disservice by not posting things I think are interesting enough to read? What social obligation am I under to reciprocate in this loose-form network? Why does it worry me? Should I learn to let go, or should I write code to free me from this tyranny?

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2 thoughts on “The conversation of ‘readme’”

  1. One way to work this dilemma out is to think about how valuable others found your contributions to delicious. If lots* of other people have been looking at things you’ve highlighted then they may miss your posts and your contributions are therefore of value to those that miss them.

    If you have the time to develop a method of using kindleability+delicious then it all depends if your guilt at not posting outweighs the time taken to develop the function**. If time is limited then I would imagine that the guilt threshold is pushed higher.

    So essentially what’s your guilt threshold? How many other people would make you feel too guilty at not posting?

    Personally I’ve never used delicious so I’m in no position to add to the guilt threshold and feel no responsibility to the invisible hordes of internet society!

    * for varying values of lots, depending on your own definition etc..

    ** I’m assuming that anything you develop will be as zero friction to use as Kindleability.

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