Deborah Barnard
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deborahwrites.com
Deborah Barnard
@deborahwrites.com
✒️ Technical writer
⌨️ Occasional coder
🐱 Human to one loud cat

https://deborahwrites.com/
4/ "What [institutions] would various rulers like to break up and destroy because they represent alternative sources of authority to their own narrative, and also there’s money to be made?" - Especially topical at the moment. The BBC and the Guardian both make mistakes, but are worth protecting.
November 15, 2025 at 4:47 PM
3/ "If it feels too perfectly tailored to me, if it presses my buttons, if it precisely tickles me where I like to be tickled or hurts me where I am vulnerable to being hurt, that’s a sign to check the facts." - this is a really useful tip, however hard it may be to practice.
November 15, 2025 at 4:47 PM
2/ It's an interesting historical contextualisation for our current age, which I find reassuring. Humanity has done some awful things, but overall we've survived and improved. We might make it through this crisis too.
November 15, 2025 at 4:47 PM
2/ While I'm kinda sad to see my favourite tooling heading (slowly) towards the exit, I'm excited about the new and shiny, and very pleased to see new docs tooling being built by a team that's earned trust over a lot of years.
November 5, 2025 at 11:16 AM
Oh damn. Thanks for sharing this, you've just articulated a thought I've been struggling to form. Also, really really sorry you went through that.
June 29, 2025 at 9:24 PM
Nice idea!

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June 29, 2025 at 8:40 PM
I should have said "if I want to write and publish an essay" - don't need to worry about attribution if the essay just sits in my google docs forever.
June 24, 2025 at 7:04 PM
2/ So if the company buys a book, they can use it to train. But they'd be iffy as heck using it in their output, especially without attribution.
Problem is: if I write an essay, I can fairly easily keep track of my research materials and append a bibliography. It's less clear how AI can do this.
June 24, 2025 at 7:02 PM
1/ As I understand it: yes for training, no for output.
Imagine I buy a book. I can then read it, annotate it, type up quotes from it for my own studies, write fanfic inspired by it etc. BUT if I want to write an essay and quote from it, I would need to correctly cite it at that point.
June 24, 2025 at 7:02 PM
I'd been wondering about taking the CherryLeaf one.
June 24, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Yeah AI search seems generally good.

For review - the former. I wouldn't rely on AI review either for style/clarity or factual accuracy - that's where you need the human to check the AI.
June 24, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Which courses did you find where best? I'm currently learning in a slightly ad hoc way (although I am attending AI the Docs today and tomorrow)
June 24, 2025 at 12:38 PM
And as you say, as a starting point for getting info sometimes.
June 24, 2025 at 12:38 PM
I'm not using it heavily day to day. Where I find it effective (so far):

- AI powered search for docs sites
- As a reviewer to get an extra point of view (caveats/risks here though)
- For some types of refactoring work (saves a little time, but needs a lot of human input and review)
June 24, 2025 at 12:37 PM