dikaios1517 on Nostr: I wouldn't be quite so optimistic about folks immediately gravitating to a ...
I wouldn't be quite so optimistic about folks immediately gravitating to a blog-specific version of long-form notes.
There are obvious reasons why users would prefer to have a note kind other than kind 1 for long-form content. Kind 1 is defined as plaintext, for one. There is no expectation that clients will render any markdown syntax found in kind 1, though at least one does. Rather, the expectation based on the spec in NIP-10 defines them as simple plaintext notes. There is no place for a title, either. Nor are kind 1 notes intended to be replaceable events, supporting editing. For all of these reasons, kind 30023 has obvious advantages for those who want to post long-form content over just using kind 1, with the only drawback being that the long-form notes typically do not appear in the same feed as kind 1 notes, but then again, many people see this as an advantage, since they don't want their feed of kind 1 notes interrupted by long blogs or articles.
The above would not be the case if we differentiated long-form content into separate kinds for articles and blogs. Not unless you are proposing some features that would be available for blog kinds that are not currently available for long-form. Is there anything that would attract people to using this new event kind for blogs that isn't already present for kind 30023? What features do blogs need to have available to them that aren't already available in kind 30023 such that users would move over to using the new event kind instead, the same way that they naturally want to use the features available in kind 30023 instead of being stuck with the limited features of kind 1?
Would the spec for blog posts essentially just be a copy/paste of NIP-23, but with different kind numbers, or would there actually be different features to attract bloggers to using that event kind instead?
Now, there is something to be said about a particularly good client focused on a specific type of content having the ability to popularize an event kind that doesn't really add any new features compared with already available kinds. For instance, Olas has popularized kind 20 despite the fact that almost all kind 1 clients will render images posted as URLs in kind 1 notes. There's not really much that you can do with an image in a kind 20 note that you can't already do with images in kind 1 notes, and arguably they have less flexability than kind 1 and are not typicly displayed in the same feed with kind 1 notes, reducing the number of users who are likely to see the post. Yet, a lot of people now prefer kind 20 for posting photos, because Olas is a beautiful client for browsing photos by themselves.
Yet, I think this is an exception that actually proves the rule. Users like to browse images separately from text notes. They are familiar with that experience from using Instagram, which Olas is very intentionally emulating. However, when it comes to long-form content, the existing equivalents are Medium and Substack for long-form displayed in a feed from various authors, or Wordpress for long-form that is from a single author. In all of these cases, you can encounter content that would be better described as an article, and other content that would be better described as a blog, and other content that is hard to define as precisely one or the other. There is no clear dilineation like there is with images. Everyone can immediately appreciate a feed filled with nothing but images, and maybe a caption along with it vs a feed that is mostly text notes with the occasional image or other content thrown in. That's not quite so easy to separate with long-form written content, where there are articles, blogs, blogticles, artilogs and everything in-between.
There are obvious reasons why users would prefer to have a note kind other than kind 1 for long-form content. Kind 1 is defined as plaintext, for one. There is no expectation that clients will render any markdown syntax found in kind 1, though at least one does. Rather, the expectation based on the spec in NIP-10 defines them as simple plaintext notes. There is no place for a title, either. Nor are kind 1 notes intended to be replaceable events, supporting editing. For all of these reasons, kind 30023 has obvious advantages for those who want to post long-form content over just using kind 1, with the only drawback being that the long-form notes typically do not appear in the same feed as kind 1 notes, but then again, many people see this as an advantage, since they don't want their feed of kind 1 notes interrupted by long blogs or articles.
The above would not be the case if we differentiated long-form content into separate kinds for articles and blogs. Not unless you are proposing some features that would be available for blog kinds that are not currently available for long-form. Is there anything that would attract people to using this new event kind for blogs that isn't already present for kind 30023? What features do blogs need to have available to them that aren't already available in kind 30023 such that users would move over to using the new event kind instead, the same way that they naturally want to use the features available in kind 30023 instead of being stuck with the limited features of kind 1?
Would the spec for blog posts essentially just be a copy/paste of NIP-23, but with different kind numbers, or would there actually be different features to attract bloggers to using that event kind instead?
Now, there is something to be said about a particularly good client focused on a specific type of content having the ability to popularize an event kind that doesn't really add any new features compared with already available kinds. For instance, Olas has popularized kind 20 despite the fact that almost all kind 1 clients will render images posted as URLs in kind 1 notes. There's not really much that you can do with an image in a kind 20 note that you can't already do with images in kind 1 notes, and arguably they have less flexability than kind 1 and are not typicly displayed in the same feed with kind 1 notes, reducing the number of users who are likely to see the post. Yet, a lot of people now prefer kind 20 for posting photos, because Olas is a beautiful client for browsing photos by themselves.
Yet, I think this is an exception that actually proves the rule. Users like to browse images separately from text notes. They are familiar with that experience from using Instagram, which Olas is very intentionally emulating. However, when it comes to long-form content, the existing equivalents are Medium and Substack for long-form displayed in a feed from various authors, or Wordpress for long-form that is from a single author. In all of these cases, you can encounter content that would be better described as an article, and other content that would be better described as a blog, and other content that is hard to define as precisely one or the other. There is no clear dilineation like there is with images. Everyone can immediately appreciate a feed filled with nothing but images, and maybe a caption along with it vs a feed that is mostly text notes with the occasional image or other content thrown in. That's not quite so easy to separate with long-form written content, where there are articles, blogs, blogticles, artilogs and everything in-between.