Boz argues the burden of context shouldn't fall entirely on writers. At scale, managing audience access matters as much as clear writing, or everything becomes open but nobody talks.
Boz has written extensively about the importance of communicating with complete context, especially as organizations scale. But here's the problem: that advice puts all the burden on the writer. As audiences grow and context collapse threatens, authors have to work harder and harder to include enough context for everyone. It's exhausting and it slows everything down.
His solution flips the equation. Communication is a two-way street. If we're going to insist writers be more intentional, we need to insist readers be more intentional too. That means managing audience access more carefully. Well-meaning people should be able to access information that legitimately improves their work, but requesting access isn't too high a bar. It's the natural consequence of work at meaningful scale.
Smaller groups don't need as much context added to each post because people already share understanding. This is precisely to avoid the overlap between people without sufficient context and content without sufficient context. It eases the burden on authors of being pitch perfect. Because the alternative is worse: everything is open but nobody is talking. Writers are so worried about context collapse that they stop sharing altogether.
The core insight is about sustainable communication at scale. You can't put all the weight on the author. Reading and writing require asymmetric effort, and managing who has access to what isn't gatekeeping, it's making it possible for people to actually communicate without drowning in the overhead of universal context.
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