Digital Gardens, the problem with Substack and a modern Good Samaritan Tale
This week's newsletter of totally unrelated things.
Hello again, dear reader.
In case you're new here, I'm Alastair Johnston and you're receiving this newsletter because you subscribed over at my website or via a link from Substack. I'm grateful for you giving me some of your time and attention and hope I always inform or entertain you here. If not, please feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended.
Here are the latest interesting things I’d love to share with you.
Digital Garden
A digital garden is a type of website that emphasises learning and growing in public. The main difference between it and most other websites is that it does not assume to be the finished item. It's not set in stone.
I’ve written a bit before about the concept of digital gardens in this newsletter. The key difference between them and a “normal’ website is that they recognise imperfection and the growth of ideas. Things can change, grow or get weeded out if wrong. The whole thing becoming something that grows, develops and changes. It’s refreshing.
I think this is quite exciting, so I’ve decided to add a digital garden to my website.
But it’s also a semi-secret garden at present. While I work on it and get it into shape, I’m not sharing it publicly. At present, new posts do not get indexed on the main site, or by search engines. They’ll just be shared with newsletter subscribers like yourself or by clicking on the 🌱 icon in the main top menu on my site. Only when they grow into fully formed writing, when they are mature, will they move to the main site for all to see. That’s they theory anyway, let’s see how it all goes.
The Problem with Substack
Over on said Digital Garden, I’ve been thinking about a problem I’ve had with Substack. To be very brief, I moved my newsletter over to it (Good) and I like the way it easily allows discovery, sharing and paid subscriptions (Good). But I’ve also felt uncomfortable with the way it keeps trying to be more and more an “everything app” - newsletters, website, podcast, social media Twitter copy (Bad), annoyed at how much it pushes me to use it’s App (Bad) and have felt it’s been getting me to play a game I don’t really want to play.
I’m not saying Substack is bad full stop. There are a lot of interesting people I read here. But I don’t think playing the Substack game is a good fit for me, outside of what I used to do, namely share content I’ve written on my website and other interesting things in my good old fashioned newsletter.
To read a bit more detail, pop over to this post.
A Modern Good Samaritan Tale
I’ll leave you with this. From my own part of the world. Because it’s writing about thoughts like this that help me parse how the world is and clarify my thoughts.
That’s it for now. I hope you enjoy my back to the old style newletter. As always I would love to hear your thoughts and comments about anything written here or linked to.
Until next time,
Be kind!
Thoughts? Insights? Feel free to comment via Substack to join the discussion or email me.
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