The Work Isn't Finished, It's Abandoned: Thoughts on WIP Pages

I want to write a bit of a response post of sorts to two comments I received on a [previous blog post](https://brennan.day/wont-you-be-my-neighbour/) where I spoke of WIP pages as a jumping off point to talk about web relations and networks. Luckily, it is all actually wonderfully connected, pun intended.

I'm writing this post instead of replying directly to the comments because... that functionality doesn't actually yet exist on my site, and I'm too worried I'll break the working comment system I already have. 😅 But also I have a lot to say on this matter.

First, I'm responding to Anthony's comment from February 25, 2026. He runs the site [The Paper Pilot's Digital Garden](https://paperpilot.dev/)

I don't agree with your position on WIP pages. I am a (practicing) fan of digital gardens, which I've found to be weirdly controversial on the indieweb. I think getting our ideas down and cultivating them later is fine, and for some having to find some new angle for a new blog post every time they want to update their views on some subject can be quite limiting. It also adds pressure, perhaps [phantom obligations](https://www.terrygodier.com/phantom-obligation) to hit a certain posting cadence or to fully flesh out an idea before being able to talk about it online (which can lead to burnout). I find a digital garden very liberating, as I don't need to make something perfect or even good before allowing it to exist online. Sure it's possible I won't get around to updating it in the future, if my passion and interests and motivation are focused on other topics, but I don't think there's any _harm_ in having a WIP and it's not like that WIP being public took away from other parts of the site - a private WIP that I lose motivation working on before finishing takes the same amount of time away.

Now, I want to clarify I don't think there's anything wrong with having works-in-progress (actually, looking at this comment, maybe it's more a response to Dale, which I'll get to later). There is [a quote with many attributions](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/03/01/abandon/) that I've carried around with me for a long while: **A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned**.

I am also well-versed in the idea of digital gardens. Starting all the way back in 1998 with [Mark Bernstein's work *Hypertext Gardens*](https://faculty.washington.edu/farkas/HCDE510-Fall2012/BernsteinGardens.pdf), and [Mike Caulfield's *The Garden and The Stream*](https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/), to the more recent [*History & Ethos of the Digital Garden* by Maggie Appleton](https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history). Heck, one of the sites I have linked in my sidebar is [Gavin Arturo Gamboa's wonderfully dense digital garden](https://gavar