About importance of reading

“We badly need to incentivize listening. And online, listening = reading. That old school program from my childhood was right, so deeply fundamentally right. Reading. Reading is Foundamental.

Let’s say you’re interested in World War II. Who would you rather have a discussion with about that? The guy who just skimmed the Wikipedia Article, or the gal who read the entirety of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?

If you’ve posted five times in the last 10 years, but you’ve read every single thing your community has ever written, I can guarantee that you, Mr. or Mrs. Lurker, are a far more important part of that community’s culture and social norms than someone who posted 100 times in the last two weeks. Value to a community should be measured every bit by how much you’ve read as much as how much you talked.”

– From “Because Reading is Foundamental” at CodingHorror Blog