I love EOS. I've owned tokens since the crowdsale and have written several articles about EOS in the past year. Like many in the EOS community, I've been encouraged by the tech and discouraged by the lackluster pace of development in the ecosystem. Recently, the EOS Network Foundation (ENF) formed to support this ecosystem's development. Led by Yves La Rose, the ENF is now funding important EOS projects.
The ENF is doing great work. It's moving fast and positioning EOS for major growth. The ENF team is world class. There's just one thing missing from the equation. The ENF doesn't seem to have a professional writer.
Consider the latest ENF Medium post. This post contains awesome information. But it's excessively wordy and is at least 10% too long as a result. Run-on sentences and convoluted syntax make it harder to read than it needs to be.
Here are the first two paragraphs of the document as published:
EOS is about to demonstrate its truly sustainable and decentralized model for building public goods for the open web. Open Source Software (OSS) is a public good and its funding is one of the information age’s most critical, yet unsolved coordination problems.
Through direct investments, sponsored working groups, Eden(s), and Pomelo, the ENF is strategically taking a multi-pronged approach to allow us to all work together as a unified EOS community to create positive sum games that will lead to EOS maturing into the best-in-class blockchain ecosystem that we’ve always expected it to become.
Here's how I might have edited these same paragraphs:
EOS is poised to provide a sustainable and decentralized model for building public goods on the open web. Open Source Software (OSS) is a public good. Funding OSS is challenging due to significant coordination problems.
Through direct investments, sponsored working groups, Eden(s), and Pomelo, the ENF is proceeding strategically. Our organization aims to fuel collaboration and unity within the EOS community, in part by creating positive sum games that bring maturity to EOS. We know EOS can become a best-in-class blockchain ecosystem. This how we get there.
Notice the difference? There may be stylistic reasons why the first paragraph reads the way that it does. But the second paragraph consists of a single run-on sentence with confusing syntax. In my opinion, when an organization dealing with millions of dollars puts out a document, the document should contain clear and concise language. This is particularly true of said document's opening paragraphs.
The ENF is not unaware of its need for a professional writer. Zack Gall contacted me about writing for the ENF a month ago. We talked on Telegram and had a long video chat, he said I had the job, I happily cleared my schedule for the Foundation, then he ghosted me. Normally, I just let that kind of thing go. But I feel it's incumbent on all of us in the EOS community to hold the ENF to the highest standards of excellence. Sloppy writing doesn't meet those standards. Neither does ghosting a contractor.
Although it may harm me professionally to draw attention to these problems, I feel that bringing them to light serves the EOS community, whereas keeping quiet about them would be doing all of us in this community a disservice. Hopefully, this post will inspire some improvement.
(Feature image from Pixabay)
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