How often do you go to write a comment or a post online, and after a bit of time spent writing you decide that it is crap and just delete it? Is this a good thing?

Mumberthrax
2018-06-07T20:32:10Z

I do this a lot. I did it just now. I wrote about five paragraphs on a topic, deleted it and started over, wrote about five more and did the same thing. Got frustrated. Some thoughts that went through my mind:

"this is not concise at all. It's disorganized and needs to be re-done"

"this is going to trigger an emotional response and that will filter how they read it, so I'll be less likely to get interesting responses"

"maybe I should just do this as a journal entry and keep it private"

"these thoughts are worth something, and even if they aren't super cogent, maybe they can be a starting point for a collaborative thinking process"

"that's dumb, nobody cares about my ramblings anyway. everyone has thoughts like this, mine aren't more important"

etc.

So what usually ends up happening in instances like this is I just don't post. Other times, I get wrapped up in trying to make a post super-high quality and it comes across as over-produced... and if I've somehow triggered an emotional response then that aspect becomes an avenue for attack.

Does anyone else experience something comparable to this? Is it a good thing for helping to maintain quality content and discussions? If not, what are strategies to improve situations like these?

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