Organizing the Archive

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — March 20, 2026

A Writer, Not an Organizer

Let me start with a simple truth.

I am a writer. I am not an organizer.

That may sound strange coming from someone who spends so much time explaining systems, structures, politics, and infrastructure. But writing and organizing are two very different skills. Organizing requires building systems that people can operate inside of. Writing requires seeing those systems in the first place.

My brain doesn’t work like an organizer’s brain.

I think in systems. I think in how things are assembled and how they can be pulled apart and rebuilt differently. I think about how A leads to B—unless D interferes with Z, and then suddenly the whole chain swings sideways toward W.

That kind of thinking is useful for analysis. It’s useful for journalism. It’s useful for long-form commentary.

It does not automatically make you good at organizing things.

And yet, here we are.

The Size of the Archive

Over the years, WPS News has accumulated a staggering amount of material.

At the moment, the count sits at 3,339 essays.

Of those, 2,495 are already published, and 844 are scheduled for future release.

And that number will continue to grow.

Why?

Because I write constantly. I always have. Writing is what I enjoy doing.

Long before any technological assistance entered the picture, I wrote five full books manually in four years. That should give you an idea of how this works for me.

Researching, connecting ideas, and writing them down in a way that other people can follow—that has been my passion for a very long time.

And when I write something, I try to include the references that led me there. Not as decoration, but as a trail. If readers want to check the work, they can follow the same documents and data I used and decide for themselves whether my conclusions hold up.

That is how knowledge moves forward.

How Knowledge Actually Grows

Real knowledge rarely appears out of nowhere.

Most of the time it happens when two ideas that have never been connected before suddenly meet. A new pattern appears, and that pattern becomes a starting point for something larger.

George Carlin once joked that if you glue two things together that have never been glued together before, somebody will buy it.

He wasn’t really joking.

That’s how discovery works. Someone connects two ideas that previously lived in separate places, and something new comes out of that connection. Then someone else examines it, challenges it, expands it, or adds another layer.

Over time the structure grows.

Unfortunately, the modern internet doesn’t reward that process very much anymore. Most platforms are built around extremely short messages and quick reactions.

Long-form archives don’t get much attention in that environment.

But they still matter.

Fixing the Structure

As the WPS News archive grew, the original structure started to break down.

There were simply too many categories, and many of them were too narrow. A reader might click on a topic expecting depth and instead find two posts buried somewhere among thousands.

That’s not useful.

So the archive is being reorganized.

Instead of dozens of tiny categories, the material is being consolidated into ten broader subject areas. The categories are intentionally wider than before so that when you click on a subject header you actually find multiple essays about that topic.

In other words, the goal is to make the archive usable again.

Two Ways to Navigate

The archive will now be organized in two different ways at the same time.

First, chronological order, because history matters. Events unfold in sequence, and understanding that sequence often explains more than isolated stories ever could.

Second, subject matter, because many readers arrive looking for information on a specific topic—maritime law, infrastructure, media analysis, political systems, or something else entirely.

Both paths will now exist side by side.

If you want to follow the timeline, you can.

If you want to explore a particular subject, you can do that too.

Three thousand essays only become valuable if readers can actually find what they need.

The Productivity Question

Some readers occasionally ask how so much material appears so quickly.

The answer is simple.

I write a lot. I always have.

And yes, I am augmented.

I say that openly because there is no point pretending otherwise. Technology changes the speed of writing, but it doesn’t replace thinking. The curiosity still has to exist. The research still has to happen. The connections between ideas still have to be made.

Augmentation simply helps move those ideas from brain to page faster.

The work itself—the thinking part—remains the same.

The Financial Reality

Now here’s the part my editors hate when I say it.

I do not get paid for this.

Not in any meaningful way.

In total book sales, since I began publishing back in 2004, I have earned $154. There are a few pennies attached to that number, but they’re not worth arguing about.

That’s the lifetime total.

Spread across more than 3,300 essays, that works out to roughly four and a half cents per article.

That’s the reality of independent publishing.

It isn’t always profitable.

But writing was never something I did because it made financial sense.

Why the Work Continues

I keep doing it because I enjoy the work.

I enjoy researching subjects. I enjoy putting pieces together that were previously separate. And I enjoy documenting what I find so that someone else can follow the same trail if they want to.

Sometimes a reader may find a useful reference.

Sometimes they may find a new angle on an old problem.

Sometimes they may simply find a place where ideas are stored long enough to still exist tomorrow.

A Long-Term Archive

That, ultimately, is what this project is about.

The internet may run on short messages and fast reactions, but serious ideas still need somewhere to live after the moment passes. Archives matter because they preserve the trail of how ideas formed and how events unfolded.

With more than three thousand essays, WPS News has quietly become one of those archives.

Reorganizing it is simply the next step.

If you are one of the readers who occasionally wanders through these pages looking for information, context, or simply a different way of connecting the dots, then this work is for you.

And if you’ve taken the time to read this far, you have my thanks.