Quality Commitments – How I commit to providing value on this site.

In software development, quality assurance means committing to thorough processes throughout the product lifecycle. Developers rigorously follow procedures and utilize tools that preemptively catch bugs, focusing on enhancing usability, functionality, and reliability.

While I’ve adopted this approach in my technical delivery of the site, I am also extending it to the site’s content and overall value. Thus, what better way is there to ensure such quality than to write it down in the form of commitments?

👉 Jump straight to the commitments.

What does “committed to quality” mean?

My Quality Commitments as of May 2024

I have a lot to say about each of these, so be sure to click through!

• Make something nice on the internet, even if it’s “too nice” to justify by standard means.
• Iterative writing, as posts in the garden will be tended to over time.
• Write with me! Public backlinking, enabling new creators and for all creators to own their content.
• Community of thoughtfulness: I write prompts related to my pieces, to aid your own musings and ponderings.
• I include downloadable resources for my posts, typically free. I make them all myself.
• Continuous documenting for transparency. Documentation lives and breathes as change is important.
• Give me feedback. And I promise to be human and make mistakes.
• No ads, affiliate marketing links, etc. I consult, make my own stuff, or I promote other artists or writers.

Building my own site allows me to avoid algorithms and ad clutter, which distract from the content and can lead to addiction. This site is designed to be a pleasant place, free from the disappointing experiences often found online. My goal is to ensure a high-quality experience for both myself as a writer and you as a reader.

With a decade of experience as a founding engineer and early-stage startup CTO, I’ve poured significant effort into creating this site. Yes, it’s overkill—but I believe we deserve nice things on the internet.

Why Do We Need a Nice Internet “Again”?

I remember the early days of the internet as a place for creativity and self-expression, before media and marketing firms took over. Platforms like Neopets, LiveJournal, and MySpace were where I thrived. My high school even featured my MySpace page in the yearbook! Let’s bring that spirit back.

A Site for Quality, Not Profit

I’ve designed this site meticulously, with no regard for a business model. Yes, it costs money to run, but my goal isn’t to grow an audience to fund it. This site is a personal space to document my thoughts and share them with others. If it attracts a solid readership, it will be because the content resonates with people simply by being genuine—much like the internet of the early 2000s, used for fun and creativity.

On this site, quality writing doesn’t imply that every piece is immediately perfect. Rather, this space functions as a digital garden🌱 Digital Garden – A personal online space where ideas are cultivated like plants in a garden, allowing for continuous growth and evolution. This concept allows for early publishing of thoughts, which can be refined over time within a space that you own and design. For a deeper dive into this philosophy, read Maggie Appleton’s essay on Digital Gardens., where ideas are seeded early and carefully cultivated over time. Each post’s development stage is clearly marked to help you understand its current maturity. Explore the garden and the different post stages.

On this site, I invite you to write with me using your preferred medium. This approach lets you own and shape your response or creation, allowing more freedom than traditional comments provide.

Instead of a comments section, I integrate meaningful contributions into a “Conversation Section” beneath the related post, displayed as a timeline.

The principle behind this is “linking in public,” akin to “learning in public,” which supports the philosophy of digital gardens🌱 Digital Garden – A personal online space where ideas are cultivated like plants in a garden, allowing for continuous growth and evolution. This concept allows for early publishing of thoughts, which can be refined over time within a space that you own and design. For a deeper dive into this philosophy, read Maggie Appleton’s essay on Digital Gardens.. This encourages a web of links, fostering community ownership away from large, corporate platforms and reclaiming the space where our ideas can thrive.

Many are caught in the SEO game, seeking backlinks in covert ways…

However, I advocate for openly building community connections, like we used to do. For example, back in the early 2000s we crafted pixel graphic banners to link to each other’s sites. I miss these intentional, public displays of digital respect.

I’m not a fan of traditional comment systems.

They often reduce engagement to fleeting interactions in a space dominated by bots and require users to register on yet another platform.

👉 If you contribute a response that you host, I promise to engage with it, ensuring our exchange is mutually enriching.

On some of my posts, I add prompts to help inspire your thinking, even if you decide not to write or make anything. Taking time to ponder or privately journal is great. If you’re bothering to read my stories and theories, it is nice to be guided back to how they may relate to your own experiences.

Out of this idea, I hope that people who have never seen themselves as writers or thinkers discover they have a lot to contribute on these topics.

In my “real” world, I have taken the stage to perform open mic poetry simply because someone took the time to encourage and invite me to. I performed many times, and as it happened, my invites and performances inspired others to get their poems published in local anthologies. It didn’t have to even be the same kind of action or expression – but it still mattered and welcomed others to find their medium and outlet.

By putting in a little bit more effort to include prompts on my posts, maybe someone will give themselves permission to investigate their own thinking and reconsider their creative outlets.

I include free, downloadable resources with my posts—all made by me. This isn’t just to win over readers; it’s a commitment to creating regularly. If this trick keeps me motivated, then it’s worth it. Plus, it benefits both my online and in-person communities. It’s a delight to think my recipes or other resources might help someone. And let’s be honest, creating things is cool! Having an archive of my creations will be an invaluable treasure over the years.

When I was a teenager, I begged my dad to teach me Visual Basic so I could write my own diary program. I even wrote my own (not very good) password encryption to keep my siblings out. But what I’m most proud of is the “memo” I included with each entry—general advice I could use throughout my life, inspired by whatever I was venting about at the time. I have hundreds of these memos, and they’re wonderful to look back on.

I hope the resources I create for each post will be similar—fun to look back on and see what I was capable of making. It’s also fascinating to see how the content informs my creative process, like asking, “What download could go with a story about all the dogs we’ve owned?”

Motivated by my background in technology where we document our systems, procedures, and lessons learned: I’ve chosen to document many things on the site. This includes my commitments to quality.

As an illustration, this page is more than a static list; it’s a transparent, active document that evolves. It serves as a living testament to my dedication to maintaining high standards. You will see this effort to continuous documenting of my second-brain through my posts – as well as throughout the site, on pages like this one.

As another example of documentation, check out my timeline, where I track features and explain site initiatives, over time.

A community cannot function without feedback. Additionally, I do not like the dynamic of simply “writing at readers”, stuck in a silo of one directional communication. Naturally, I want my digital garden to reflect community insights and my own commitment to continuous learning. Hence, this requires a feedback loop. I need you!

As such, there are multiple ways to interact with me: slide into my email inbox (encouraged on all my update emails), use my contact form, or even book consultation to “pick my brain” on topics of interest.

I also commit to being human. This means I promise I will make mistakes and that I will have other life boundaries and commitments to keep, aside from this project or its connected socials.

Additionally, I commit to my in-person community to keep me accountable, so that the online world does not need to. That right to an in-person community accountability system is for all humans. Our digital age often goes beyond this right into an over-scaled, unimaginable place, threatening mental health of others.

I am not interested in this kind of content or money-making activity. However, I would promote other creators’ work. If I do wind up having any reach with this site or the updates email, I would consider sponsored placements for individual creators or small creative shops.

Over the years I have bought some cool stuff. Consequently, people in my community have asked me for links to that stuff. However, I do not trust the product quality over time. The companies change their materials and practices and something I could recommend might be total crap later. So I probably won’t be linking to anything you can buy (unless it’s a book), especially from places like amazon, affiliate or not!

I do offer consulting services, but I offer these anyway on my core company site, Verticolabs.com. However, on AngelaMurrell.com, they extend beyond product & technology services, and I work more directly with small business owners on everyday business decisions. Curious to know more? Read more about my consulting services here.