Although easier to critique other people's works, writing even a poor article or blog is not easy (procedurally). And to follow my critiques, they are not easy to overcome in my own posts. The most pressing pressure is time. Although professional writers may be pressured by due dates, I am pressured by just spending personal time on the article. Many posts are not completely to my liking, then found that I do not publish much. Eventually, I feel that enough information is provided and the general thoughts and ideas were presented so I just publish it anyways.
Personally, I wish I had more time to research. I wish I had more time to put together the research to make a better analysis. I wish I had more energy to more things. I wish I could make my thoughts follow a more coherent process. I wish I could focus more on the topic.
Blogging is difficult for me to stay on topic. I segue way too much. I delete way more than I leave in. Sometimes, I go so off tangent that I even start another article mostly intending to drop a few notes so I can return later then go on another tangent then eventually forgetting my original post.
So, I still encourage anyone to blog, write, or simply a journal. No one needs to read it. I feel that I have learned a lot about myself from these posts.
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Friday, November 15, 2019
Scammish Pseudo Professional Blog Posts
I am like many people who get suckered by click-bait articles. But unlike most, I like to do some due diligence when an occasional post strikes my fascination. Recently I have been doing some research for a project that I hope to work on, I have found that a lot of these articles have no references... not even the author.
I can understand a personal blog (like this) not following all the rules, but our default disclaimer is basically take our advice with a grain of salt because we have no credentials. I dislike these blogs that are in the name of a company especially a seemingly legit companly like glassdoor, monster, and indeed (yes, I have been researching online job hires).
My Hates
In general as far as I can remember, I absolutely hate articles with no dates!
How hard is it to post a date? Not hard at all! So something is suspicious. In the best case, the company is just not legit because they are not putting the reader's concern in mind. This should be the first "readers beware" especially if you want to source the material or use their services.
Next, I hate lists that have absolutely no sources or references. And if there are no sources or references, then there should be some description of the author.
Yes, her articles are interesting reads but there are no backings. Where is she getting the information from? If from her personal experience, what is her experience? This is also not hard at all. It is the internet. The author can just as easily just make up a description.
And the author's title (Monster Staff) in the article from monster? They seriously could not come up with a more useless title to add some sort of legitimacy to the post? Might as well just signed, "some bum from the street" or anonymous.
Here's an example that does a good job of the above items:
What irks me even more is that even reddit posts are more legit than the professional-looking blogs and articles. Even in reddit, at least some of the users will list their sources even to the point of admitting not only that it is from personal experience but that it is super biased.
So it just saddens me that many corporations are nothing like people. They put on a good face to make us forget that they will scam you if they can in as legal a method that they can.
On a Side Note
Would be nice if there was a way to rate blogs, articles, or whatever based purely on how they do certain things. I personally use the above method to rank how trust-worthy a company or site is.
See also
A good article with dates, references, and a good bio. Adds a lot of trust and believability to the article.
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