TL:DR – I, a writer, was criticised for writing…seems an odd take to have.
I get asked a lot of questions…I always try to provide an accurate answer or find one if I don’t have an answer to give immediately. It’s inevitable, I suppose, if you write a lot on a lot of topics, you become known for it…to a degree. Anyway, when lots of people were tentatively heading for Mastodon at the end of October and into November, I kept getting asked questions about what it is, how is it best used, how do I find people, what are the pros and cons etc.
Although I was well aware of the FAQs that were out there, I put together my own in my own words, partly to rehearse and reinforce my understanding of Mastodon and how it functions and how one might get the most out of it and partly to provide answers to actual questions I’d been asked over the weeks about it. I found it quite odd that one reader asked why I had written it when there are other FAQs out there, as if there is no need for anyone to offer their take on a given topic, ah well…
I’ve written more than 10000 articles in 30+ years as a science writer and these days in my peri-retirement I write what I want to write and hope that somebody is entertained, amused, informed, or inspired by the words I string together. If they’re not…well…they can take it or leave it. It’s nice to know people are reading my stuff, but there are 8 billion of us on the planet, there are bound to be more than a few who aren’t fussed in the slightest by what I have to say.
I must admit that part of the reason I wrote it was so that I could use the phrase “Less musk, more tusk”…writers are a strange breed, aren’t we?