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Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 27, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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How do you (personal or impersonal, your choice) find the time and energy to ever add to discussions, here or elsewhere? I enjoy reading other peoples posts here and seeing the discussions that form. I could read for hours. But I find it hard to sit down and write out my thoughts on anything just because of how long it takes. I want to pay my debts to the community in the local currency, but it's just so draining to write anything more than one or two sentence replies (which is probably why I'm more lively in real time conversations). Reading and lurking just feel like an infinitely more productive use of my time, even for topics I claim to be passionate about.

Is it just a matter of exercising my writers-muscles? Is it my method of commenting, is there some more efficient way to comment? Do other people put hours into posts with any amount of substance? How do I avoid the feeling that my time on any corner of the internet is pissing into an ocean? Is most everything on here peoples' first edit? (I find myself going back and forth, writing and re-writing a lot of what I have to say). Maybe participating just isn't made for me.

This is generally a question of "Why is commenting so hard and how do I stop lurking?".

(This comment took somewhere between thirty and forty minutes to make as a point of comparison. I have no idea if that is a lot or a little. It feels like it is so much more than it should be).

I'm not as active as I used to be, given the additional friction from having the Motte move off Reddit, and IRL engagements. That said, when I do write, it's because-

  1. I feel like I have something interesting to say

  2. I have domain expertise regarding something someone else said, for example I might chip in with medical advice once in a while.

  3. I'm proctrasturbating instead of doing something more important (ding ding!)

Roughly in diminishing order of frequency.

While writing a comment worthy of being dissected here is a task and a half, I take pride in my writing, and the idea of an unusually astute audience reading it is always a bonus!

Frankly speaking, unless you're making a gigantic essay on a topic needing citations and framing, just let it rip.

Or wait till some, gasp, is being wrong on the internet, that usually gets the writing juices flowing ;)