Reviewing and Revising

Process Post 4

This week I had the delightful opportunity to go through a fellow student’s website critically, and offer pointers as to what I would change and improve on a second pass. For me, I realized that having a fresh set of eyes on our own work is immeasurably helpful to make sure that our own content is as legible and accessible as possible. I know that I myself tend to read and agonize over my projects constantly, to the point where I know just about everything there is to know about the subject. However because of this, I then start to operate under the assumption that everyone in my audience has the same level of knowledge as I do on a particular subject, which in turn means that they will jump to the same conclusions as I will. Because I am operating under this assumption, I don’t lay things out as clearly as I might otherwise.

Like Cory Doctorow mentions in his article “The Memex Method”, it is important to remember that you have to make your blog make sense to your audience. Not only will this make your content more enjoyable for the audience, but it makes it far easier for you yourself to look back and understand just what in the world you were talking about in the first place. This is an important step that I feel like I have been glossing over recently in my efforts to just get things posted on a timely schedule. I think that when I have time this week, I would like to go back through the posts I have made so far in order to ensure they all make sense.

Additionally, after reading about Tanya Basu’s concept of the digital garden, I feel a little more relaxed about the kind of content I can produce on my blog. Up until this point I was feeling a little worried that I would not always have the time to cook and write down recipes. I think if I start looking at my blog as a digital garden where I can reflect on my experiences freely, it will feel more like a hobby and more enjoyable than before.

Works Cited

Basu, Tanya. “Digital Gardens Let You Cultivate Your Own Little Bit of the Internet.” MIT Technology Review, MIT Technology Review, 3 Sept. 2020, https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/03/1007716/digital-gardens-let-you-cultivate-your-own-little-bit-of-the-internet/. 

Doctorow, Cory. “The Memex Method.” Medium, Medium, 10 May 2021, https://doctorow.medium.com/the-memex-method-238c71f2fb46.