What we write publicly are reverse queries for the kind of people they invite (and I now have personal data to confirm that it does work very well). But in that context, what about the old queries that get outdated? The benefit of writing in contrast to just thinking in your head, is that you build on top of things, because what you have written has already been given concrete structure. But, what about things you have move past through and no longer represent what you think? For ideas you had flirted with at some point but you later realized some fundamental catch due to which the idea is found to be futile, this stale-query issue is common because, after already figuring out that you have wasted enough time with an essentially fruitless idea, you would be biased not to write further about it explaining why that idea is fruitless. Because at that point, it seems to you that the discovery that the idea is fruitless in not a discovery, rather the moment you had gotten initially involved with the idea was rather the true mistake, and so it’s better to bury it down instead of doing a post-martum. And thus, you end up with some stale reverse queries.

For an example, I had written about investing once long ago. That post gives a very crude understanding of stuff. I understood the topic quite more over time (and had even written another draft on it around a year ago but that stayed in drafts as I no longer was interested in clarifying what I have understood of the topic now, only to conclude in the end that the whole affair is a bad use of time, and it’s better to not focus on these things specially at young age).

Now, there are several options. Either (a) let these stale queries be; they don’t cause any problem. Or (b) remove such stale queries from the place wherever you write so that no more people stumble into them. Or (c) go back and edit those posts/essays and update the ideas. Or (d) write new posts on the ideas doing a post-martum and link to these newer posts on top of the old posts with the stale ideas.

Firstly, do old queries have any unpleasant consequences? I suppose, yes. If right queries attract the right kind of people. The not-right queries invite the not-right people (obviously I don’t mean in sense of wrong or bad people, but not right = not the specific fit). The quality of a good query is that you don’t have to filter the results further. So stale queries will only increase the surface area for people who have had similar thoughts, and is often okay where you think their thinking will also later move on, but it does increases the filtering burden, which isn’t an issue at low volume but is clearly undesirable when volume increases. (Volume won’t effect at platforms where looking for older stuff is not convenient e.g. old social media posts, so they are fine because average reader is not going to read old such queries anyway.)

For blog, (b) seems most convenient option, but I think (d) is more useful, because (i) post martums, I suppose, can reveal a general pattern of mistakes that can even be helpful in irrelevant things, and (ii) post martum posts often can be really good reverse queries for they show the progression of thoughts, and can hence make a person who has had similar progression pause for a moment.

While (c) is more in spirit of Montaigne — the guy who invented essay writing genre (the OG — if you will). His collection of essays were always in alteration and were republished with revisions. This method I believe is really useful for one’s internal notes or writings for one’s own sense-making, because you don’t necessarily need to keep an older copy if you properly update them.

But for a personal site, I believe (d) is the right option specifically for topics that are more important, and (b) for unimportant stuff. (c) is cool, but fixing up stuff is often messier than just starting from scratch.