There is a story out there, I can't remember where I first heard it and haven't done the work to attribute, but it goes something like this:
A pottery class teacher told their students that they would be graded in two different ways, one group was on the BEST piece they created, and the other group was on the quantity. Then there would be a public show where both groups would be judged.
In almost all cases the group that was graded on quantity had the better work, so the moral of the story? Do more work.
Maybe not in public
I have been noticing lately that people have been twisting that story into saying that we should be posting, marketing, etc more and to get more content (god I had that word) out there. The "market" will filter out the bad stuff and your great stuff will "go viral".
Practice in Private
What I think it says is that you need to be working on your craft, whether its writing, video, your job, etc all the time; and only when you think something is of special value share it.
Sometimes people have a lot of special value like Seth Godin, he publishes a blog article everyday; however, they aren't all stellar. In fact I would say they are just good.
Someone else that I admire and follow their work is Derek Sivers, he is a much slower thinker than Seth. They come from different backgrounds and built different companies in different ways. They are both writers and teachers today.
I was getting a lot of pings from Derek's blog this fall and I wasn't really impressed with what I was seeing, there was an itch at the back of my head thinking, "hmmmmm, I wonder what he's launching? This feels like the start of a launch."
It turns out he was running a post a day experiment, and he agreed with me, he didn't like the results.
What I do
I try to be more like Derek.
Even though I don't post here, or on my other public squares, that doesn't mean that I'm not writing. It just means that the ideas that I am getting across aren't ready for the public yet.
But I always err on the side of posting when something is close to that line. I think that everyone has the responsibility to share with the world their well thought ideas. The world needs more great ideas and the only way to get them consistently is by getting a lot of ideas, mushing them together and picking out the great ones.