Do not link from here to x

Site Feedback
1

@Fred: I have a request. On the mev letter, when the author has a user on this site, just mention them with their @username. That links to their profile where they can choose whatever information and links to show. If they are not here but have a website, link to their website. If neither of those is an option, just write their name, without link.

2 Likes
2

Thanks for the feedback!

Let me share some context before jumping into the suggestion of excluding links from Twitter/X.

I have gone through many iterations since I first started posting these lists in order to optimize the reading experience and pack more information into a lighter package. With the MEV Letter, I only have a couple of minutes of the readers attention and I’d like for them to get through as much as possible in those minutes. There’s a lot of great content being published by amazing authors each week. One way of showing my gratitude towards these individuals is by collecting and sharing their work through the letter.

The content included in the letter is categorized based on type, grouped based on topic, and ranked in order of importance. I do my best to distill each link to a single sentence, shaving off any unnecessary words and providing links to any additional relevant resource (such as author profiles) connected to the content. I would see it as a failure on my part if a reader gets stuck halfway through by having to look up a missing link and then not returning to explore the rest of the resources.

Beyond making sure the letter have all relevant links included, I think it would be rude and injust for me to omit author profiles and disconnect them from their work if they use Twitter/X. It would be a worse outcome both for the authors who deserve to be properly credited, and to the reader who would not have an easy path to explore more of the authors work.

In addition to this, a lot of authors chose to publish threads on Twitter/X to accompany their content. I’ve received feedback that reading these before the main link improves the overall reading experience, especially for longer format content such as papers and presentations.

I can very much sympathize with the intention of disconnecting from Twitter/X. However for this specific initiative I believe that including these links, due to the reasons outlined above, serves a useful purpose and should not be subject to discrimination.

What will change from now:

  1. I’m open to changing the author links to websites when these exist (and I’m able to find them). I will make this change for both individuals and organizations going forward. This will be most noticeable for organizations who, in general, all have easy to find websites.

  2. I will experiment with tagging @usernames in the forum version for content published here on the forum. This will result in me creating two versions, one for email and one for the forum, but it should be manageable.

  3. Threads on Twitter/X often have useful comments and discussions. However, if this is not the case and the same thread has been posted on Warpcast, I will prioritize Warpcast. (This will require quite a bit more work, especially since usernames can be different across platforms, so bear with me as I ramp up in this regard)

I will begin these changes in the upcoming #43 edition scheduled for next week.

Thanks you for caring about this and sharing suggestions!

2 Likes