up:: You are what you eat

Art of Link Curation §

Links matter.

Sharing link-based knowledge online has revealed new responsibilities—and opportunities.

Don’t overwhelm your reader with lazy linking to every dang thing. Show some restraint man!

You need to at least consider how you might direct, guide, and engage your readers through the “Art of Link Curation.”

But the over-linking problems don’t just affect the reader, it affects you, the builder. How? Link Dilution.

Link Dilution §

“Link Dilution” is what happens when we over-link things… It’s great at first, because we get all giddy look at the backlinks (and the graph).

But folks over-linking are in for a very rude awakening if they continue over-link everything all the time. Why? Because over time, the backlinks will overpopulate like weeds, covering up the more valuable connections by their sheer numbers.

It’s the same thing that happened to many people in Evernote who saved too many articles. It buried the personally meaningful links under a pile of mostly worthless links. Over time, you end up scrolling and wasting more and more time hunting for meaningful links amidst all the noise of all the false-positives. That’s Link Dilution.

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There are a lot of PKM dead-ends, but you’ll avoid many of them now that you’re equipped with this knowledge. Because there are dead-ends, and then there are rabbit holes.