I'm a Lifelong Learner subscriber but not a MakingHistory subscriber.
I think a website is the ideal way to go. You can get the precise functionality you want to support your readers and objectives. A custom website is not turnkey, like substack, however, and you'll be exchanging some obstacles, dependencies and headaches for other ones.
I don't think Obsidian Publish alone would provide you with everything you're looking for. Perhaps Obsidian in combination with Astro or a similar web tool is the best of both worlds. I've seen the Obsidian + Astro integration in action and it works beautifully. However, you'll need someone to handhold you in the process or, more likely, to fully develop it for you. Support is necessary afterwards, for software updates and such.
It would be a great improvement if Substack would provide a graphical display of all posts, as Obsidian Publish can, or as TheBrain.com can.[^1][^2] Even better would be to have AI capabilities in Substack (the current Search capability is very limited).
Lacking, or not choosing one of those possibilities, it might be helpful to review some of the Leaderboards in Substack:
> maybe I'll be able to figure out how to "tease" the in-depth content with a subset of it that will serve as an effective advertisement. Maybe that's what I should be putting onto Substack?
I think this will be my approach as well. Substack is not good for a knowledge base or long term organization of evergreen content. Something like a wiki would be better. Maybe categories (not sections) with an index page could work for simple organizing like on a blog. But complex interconnections are very difficult to map and follow.
Because of its reach, however, and exploration and browsing capabilities, plus multimedia, Substack is good for curating, newsletter updates, and newsy posts. I will use it more for “content marketing” for my courses and community elsewhere, and for curating and Notes, which I’m enjoying to restack and share things I find interesting.
Social media in general has a "recency problem" and focuses more on the now rather than the longer term building of a thing. Dan seems to be running into this issue with Substack which I think has probably gotten worse since they introduced notes.
The open web does a bit better with not being so "recent" though many have noticed that even Google Search seems to favor recency over more in-depth content that isn't necessarily recent.
I'm sort of curious what a network of interlinked wikis might look like... Perhaps with an interlinked wiki architecture like https://anagora.org/ which could aggregate everyone's work and potentially cross link it? Or Ward Cunningham's FedWiki effort which was loosely tied together?
With research publications, each article begins with an abstract. The idea might be described as helping the reader decided if he or she should continue.
Those reading scholarly journals have a similar problem. There are many journals that might possibly contain a useful article or two per issue. I think Substack is stuck in the newsletter model. The original idea I think was to have readers find a few authors of relevance and concentrate on them. The business model fits this concept.
I'm a Lifelong Learner subscriber but not a MakingHistory subscriber.
I think a website is the ideal way to go. You can get the precise functionality you want to support your readers and objectives. A custom website is not turnkey, like substack, however, and you'll be exchanging some obstacles, dependencies and headaches for other ones.
I don't think Obsidian Publish alone would provide you with everything you're looking for. Perhaps Obsidian in combination with Astro or a similar web tool is the best of both worlds. I've seen the Obsidian + Astro integration in action and it works beautifully. However, you'll need someone to handhold you in the process or, more likely, to fully develop it for you. Support is necessary afterwards, for software updates and such.
It would be a great improvement if Substack would provide a graphical display of all posts, as Obsidian Publish can, or as TheBrain.com can.[^1][^2] Even better would be to have AI capabilities in Substack (the current Search capability is very limited).
Lacking, or not choosing one of those possibilities, it might be helpful to review some of the Leaderboards in Substack:
- [Politics Leaderboard | Substack](https://substack.com/leaderboard/us-politics/paid)
- [History Leaderboard| Substack](https://substack.com/leaderboard/history/paid)
- [Learning on Substack](https://substack.com/search/learning?searching=publication)
I doubt that going back to postings on a self-maintained website would have the exposure to new subscribers that Substack or YouTube provide.
---
1. E.g., see [Jerry | History of History](https://app.thebrain.com/brain/3d80058c-14d8-5361-0b61-a061f89baf87/2f3d7fb5-6ad4-e7fb-d9f1-9325bd35e38e)
2. E.g., see [TheBrain Demo | Sample Brain Projects](https://app.thebrain.com/brain/331da8eb-c301-476e-8244-eea9a46bfbf1/c9e08941-d7bf-4ffd-ba35-3007a7678d7d)
> maybe I'll be able to figure out how to "tease" the in-depth content with a subset of it that will serve as an effective advertisement. Maybe that's what I should be putting onto Substack?
I think this will be my approach as well. Substack is not good for a knowledge base or long term organization of evergreen content. Something like a wiki would be better. Maybe categories (not sections) with an index page could work for simple organizing like on a blog. But complex interconnections are very difficult to map and follow.
Because of its reach, however, and exploration and browsing capabilities, plus multimedia, Substack is good for curating, newsletter updates, and newsy posts. I will use it more for “content marketing” for my courses and community elsewhere, and for curating and Notes, which I’m enjoying to restack and share things I find interesting.
Social media in general has a "recency problem" and focuses more on the now rather than the longer term building of a thing. Dan seems to be running into this issue with Substack which I think has probably gotten worse since they introduced notes.
The open web does a bit better with not being so "recent" though many have noticed that even Google Search seems to favor recency over more in-depth content that isn't necessarily recent.
I'm sort of curious what a network of interlinked wikis might look like... Perhaps with an interlinked wiki architecture like https://anagora.org/ which could aggregate everyone's work and potentially cross link it? Or Ward Cunningham's FedWiki effort which was loosely tied together?
"But complex interconnections are very difficult to map and follow."
See TheBrain examples I posted in comment after yours.
Pat
With research publications, each article begins with an abstract. The idea might be described as helping the reader decided if he or she should continue.
Those reading scholarly journals have a similar problem. There are many journals that might possibly contain a useful article or two per issue. I think Substack is stuck in the newsletter model. The original idea I think was to have readers find a few authors of relevance and concentrate on them. The business model fits this concept.