On blog authorship and (un)certainty

There's a difference between a blog and an article, and it seems to me it's about certainty. Why should I write this blog? It could be to record trivial events, it could be self-aggrandisement, but I think it's about dealing with uncertainty. If I were fully convinced about the detail, I guess I would write an article and submit it to a journal. But generally I'm speculating a bit; trying to focus my mind by writing something out as clearly as I can for an unknown audience (an audience that has the power to answer back). There's also a nice comment in David Rosenthal's blog: "Taking small, measurable steps quickly is vastly more productive than taking large steps slowly, especially when the value of the large step takes even longer to become evident".

I know I'm writing things that colleagues may not agree with. Sometimes, I expect the process of writing to move me closer to their ideas. Sometimes I might hope they move closer to my ideas. Sometimes we may have to learn to live with our differences. The point for me is to generate some strange kind of conversation, not just with close colleagues but to get some feedback from colleagues interested in data curation across the world.

If I can work out what is causing confusion, articulate it and resolve it, perhaps I can stop being "confused of Kenilworth"!