Quality Writing is Systemic

In “Quality is Systemic,” software developer Jacob Kaplan-Moss offers a helpful framework for thinking broadly about the systemic conditions that produce quality software. The author makes a compelling case that:

“…a group of mediocre programmers working with a structure designed to produce quality will produce better software than a group of fantastic programmers working in a system designed with other goals.”

I believe the same is true of quality writing. While individual performance plays a role, system quality matters more.

In this piece, I’ll apply this systems-informed perspective to some of the unmet needs of conversational liquidity providers (CLPs) in the Farcaster ecosystem.

For the past three months I’ve been stewarding an invite-only discussion group in Warpcast DCs called Return On Attention (RoA).

I had no plans to start such a group. But something emerged in the wake of “In the Farconomy, Hope is a Powerful Drug” — a personal piece I first published in Dec. 2024 and sent in DCs to a limited group of readers only.

The piece hit a nerve and spawned some great long-form discussions on creative labor, value flow, and writer monetization — conversations that became compelling enough that I decided to make the piece public and focus more attention on facilitating fruitful unfolding of whatever-this-new-thing-wanted-to-become.

It all seemed too embryonic and informal for Paragraph posts at the time, and I wanted a separate outlet for nascent personal writings inspired by the group’s conversations. So I quietly started keeping an online journal (Deep Worth: Notes on Creativity, Labor, and Value) using Notion.

This post you're now reading is the first I've released on Paragraph since I started keeping the journal.

Today the RoA group has two co-admins (myself and Trigs) stewarding a group of 38 members. We keep a low profile (limit membership, don't seek attention, avoid tokenizing, etc.) for several reasons:

• To preserve the cozy-corner community atmosphere (e.g., slow and low-pressure posting cadence, social cohesion, intrinsic motives for joining/contributing, gift culture, etc.)

• To give the group a chance to find its proper form on its own timetable, without the pressures growth can bring.

• To allow ample time and space for careful reading, deep-dive writing, prolonged reflection, and consideration of complexity.

• To protect the valuable attention, time, and labor of the CLPs from being usurped for low-signal, wasteful, or un-aligned purposes.

In other words, we prioritize return on our attention and recognize that quality writing (and good discussion) is a product of healthy systems.

Since the UI of Warpcast DCs is designed for short-form messaging, however, we often struggle with discussion threads. Convos are difficult to find, follow, and resurface.

We’ve been discussing the possibility of migrating the group elsewhere and, eventually, making some of our conversations public — hopefully in ways that could benefit the Farcaster network as a whole. We’ve identified two roadblocks:

1. We haven’t yet found a Farcaster client or other discussion forum software that aligns with our quality-writing-is-systemic approach.

2. We lack a sustainable economic model to fund the bootstrapping, moderation, and maintenance labor to establish a public branch for a small community that intends to stay small… without tokenizing the original community in a way that turns it into the product.

So despite the frustrations, RoA will stay in Warpcast DCs for the time being — and we do so out of respect for the oft-overlooked value CLPs can contribute when they're able to work in the right contexts.

We evaluate the health of the community from a systems perspective, so we won’t migrate elsewhere or take any of our discussions public until we find both a new home and an economic model that justifies the time and admin effort required to do it well. If we move too early, the risk of negative effects increases, including the possibility that we'll have to move multiple times.

Slowcore HQ — a Warpcast cozy-corner channel that also emerged through a Farcaster-seeded movement, and for which I also serve as an admin — recently went into hibernation for similar reasons.

In the RoA group, we've observed that deep-dive writers, channel moderators, curators, community-builders, lore-keepers, storytellers, knowledge preservers, and other CLPs are underserved in the current Farcaster ecosystem.

These groups of quality daily active users (qDAUs) collectively generate a great deal of network value, but even in the Farconomy — which is widely (and rightfully) considered the best place for experimentation with “programmable money” in social network contexts — they are still woefully underfunded.

Since the work of CLPs is currently embedded in systems that hinder “slowcore” conversations and lack suitable economic models, it often feels like an uphill battle to carve out space that might provide a better return on our attention.

With the right systems in place, however, the Farcaster ecosystem could potentially unlock much more of the untapped network value CLPs contribute. This could, in turn, attract more of those who appreciate long reads to Farcaster.

What might the "right systems" look like in Farcaster contexts? How could we optimize for systems that enable CLPs to collectively produce better quality writing?

While there may be many valid ways to answer these questions, in general we might say that CLPs need systems that enable reciprocity, continuity, and preservation of relevant context.

Applying the Kaplan-Moss system-quality evaluation framework:

For cozy corners like the RoA group chat and the Slowcore-HQ channel, that might involve facilitating ongoing conversations spanning days or weeks (instead of prioritizing cast volume or engagement), making affordances for literary curation (e.g., customizable “writer playlists” of essays), and prioritizing leisurely reading over quick sound-bites.

It might look like dedicated spaces for FAQ pages, membership criteria, and a community code of conduct.

It might look like better affordances for indexing, archiving, regularly maintaining wikis or other knowledge bases, and re-discovering evergreen topics.

(For more ideas, see “Mass Monetizing Social Media” by RoA co-admin Trigs).

Socially, it might look like building a culture that encourages deep-dive writing, allows ample time and space for editing done by humans with high-level skills, and avoids pressuring writers to release work before it’s ready.

Psychologically, it might look like cultivating habits of treating any production issues that might crop up as systemic failures, rather than blaming or shaming individuals for their shortcomings.

If a group of skilled writers + editors + curators + maintainers collectively produces low-quality work or struggles with burnout and attrition, it might look like asking ourselves: where could we intervene to improve the reciprocity affordances of the existing systems?

Economically, it might look like network rewards models, or interventions to facilitate network capital efficiency and reintegrate lost forms of value back into the network. It might look like novel and experimental approaches to incentive alignment such as Impact. It might look like philanthropic experiments such as creators-in-residence or club goods to fund CLP labor.

Overall, it might look like a Farconomy that better facilitates reciprocal value flow to the four roles Tom Beck describes in “Curator Economy, Not Creator Economy” (writers, readers, critics, and librarians):

“..think about all the users across the 90-9-1 ratio… figure out how to share a platform's overall value with all its contributors, big and small… this means rewarding readers and curators alongside creators. […] For vibrant creative scenes to function, the value must flow to all four roles. Good work must be created, and it must be identified, amplified, and stored for the future. Only then can you create an environment favorable to readers, which increases the value of the entire scene.”

Unlocking the untapped network value of creative scenes and other CLP work calls for an approach that considers the complexities of systems driven by human factors as well as technical and economic factors.

Toward that end, Farcaster might consider spending less time on finding the “best” individuals (qDAUs), and more time on developing systems that bring out the best in a wider range of humans.

May a thousand quality-systems experiments bloom in the Farconomy.

Image: Gerd Altmann on Pixabay.