You can feel free to post exactly that, perhaps in the #support:meta category if you want, though the single reply isn’t derailing, so it’s okay enough.
I don’t now ever consciously feel the way you are describing. I can’t imagine dejection from something to which I would say “yes, that’s it, I couldn’t have said it better”. I feel it adds wind to my sails rather than take it.
This actually goes right into FLO stuff! I do relate to what you’re saying in one way: I used to feel that way more often. I had thoughts about the music educational book I would write or the research I wanted to do because I saw it missing. When I later learned that others (perhaps a whole world of others) had already been working on this stuff, it was disheartening in a sense. Damn, I was setting myself up to work on X, but here it is already, what’s the point of me doing anything? Like it can get to questioning life-purpose even.
To me, this is a core motivation behind Snowdrift.coop: I could possibly succeed in a zero-sum competition such as getting my music to get attention or I get the job as a professor somewhere etc. But knowing that it’s zero sum, that there are 5-10 equally qualified people for the job and that a good portion end up doing some B.S. thing instead… this is so discouraging.
So, I found myself deciding not to play that game. I worked through that sense of “but I was investing all this thought in a project, and yet here someone already did it…” to turn into my current mindset. I now think that the problem is the lack of ability to cooperate and build together.
I’ve worked over years to notice and then drop that ego-based idea of wanting to have been the one to do something. I hate that feeling. FLO and related has been my framing to fully find the mindset that says, “I want the results, and I’m happy to be (but not tied to being) part of getting them; so my focus is exclusively on figuring out where I can most help”.
If someone else actually solves the snowdrift dilemma as well as we envision, I will now have no disappointment about me (and Snowdrift.coop) not being the hero to have solved it. I’m consciously setting up everything in my life to avoid having that sort of conflict of interest.
But I see an outstanding issue of someone else doing something I was planning though: Consider if I post something that expresses what you were going to say. In most cases there may indeed be something else. The something you would change in the post if it were a wiki! So, there’s some place for you editing a post of mine to improve it. That’s the win-win, the collaboration, the pivot away from competiton and toward cooperation. I’d like to see more of that. Imagine you could open a MR to any of my posts!! I would so appreciate the feedback and practice refining my own communication. We could end up with higher-and-higher quality posts…
Anyway, aside from all this, I see value in a reaction that is literally that: I give this post a 100 score. I have no MRs I’d even imagine doing here. I wholeheartedly agree with this. I’m not sure enough to argue strongly for adding it, but I’d be fine with having it. But we can also post any reaction with some text as an actual reply if it’s worth it in any case.