Marco Arment On The Curators Code

Fantastic write up about why the curators code is stupid, a must read for any blogger. I do have a nit to pick with Marco's argument about the value of discovery. I agree that in general discovery has very little value, and  for the reasons Marco sites in the article.

However, there is a special case were discovery has significant value. When a website is creating real value by investing time, skill, and effort into finding and curating things that are not easily found.

For Instance, the popular blog letters of note spends a great deal of time and effort finding letters scattered throughout the interwebs. They come up with gems buried in historical archives the truly shed light on a historical time, a particular place or culture. While the wares they dish out are not authored by them they present huge value to the internet and the world at large.

In many cases, their hard work is rewarded by complete re-posting ( like this ) of their article with a minuscule attribution somewhere near the end , which of course creates no incentive for the reader to click through to the 'Original' discovery. This is causes enormous damage to these types of discovery sites and in the end could be their demise.


Read More: http://www.marco.org/2012/03/12/not-a-curator