Why Internet Communities Struggle to Publish Quality Over Quantity
"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as quoted in Johannes Falk, Goethe aus näherm persönlichen Umgange dargestellt, 1832.
The internet solved the problem of who gets to publish and scaled the problem of deciding what is worth reading. Before its invention, quality was expensive to produce. A newspaper had finite column inches. A magazine printed only so many pages per issue. Publishers rationed paper, distribution, shelf space, marketing budgets, and editorial labor. Broadcast networks operated under rigid scheduling constraints. Could NBC air two shows at the same time? Hello, MSNBC. The innovations to make scarce supply more available never stop.
Scarcity isn't just an economic condition. Scarcity can function as an editorial filter. To publish something meant displacing something else. An editor had to ask: Is this worth the slot? Entire industries emerged. The New Yorker...
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