Tell HN: Everything Needs a TLDR
If you are reading something online which does not clearly tell you what it is about or a strong hint of its conclusion, then you are likely just a pair of eyes which are measured by advertising value.
A "tldr" - "too long, didn't read" gives us the summary at the start, before we waste our valuable time reading words which may be multiplied and expanded with the intent to keep us reading longer.
In times past there were bookstores. You could flip through a book, TLDRing your way toward the end. If you found enough sections of value you would buy it. On the web, we can't flip (unless it's a PDF, which may even be worse).
Always consider the source of the information. What is their motive, how do the earn money to survive? Do they really want to share information, or do they just want to lure advertising targets? Well written, summary-first content can tell you this quickly and potentially save you hours each week.
7 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 30.0 ms ] threadNot everything in this world needs to be optimized for speed and productivity. Where is the room for artistry and craftsmanship?
There are many out there who write and create content for the joy of writing and for helping out others. Not everyone is trying to maximize on profit.
Sure, there are probably billions of SEO spam pages out there now which serve no value other than improving the site's page rank, but you can't generalize that this is true of all sites.
It may be harder to find quality content (see the top thread of today on Google search for more on that), but it is still out there.
Also, you can definitely "flip through" a webpage. Easier than a book in fact. And you can even cmd+F and search to see if something you're looking for is in there.
You mean a topic sentence or an introduction? You mean Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) format?
Or do you mean that millennial minds are simply too advanced to be able to parse these kind of things without that annoying "TLDR:" tag?
So yes, I agree you should have the essence of a TLDR, but I don't agree it needs to be called that or tagged that way. I don't think that's in any way a recent or novel invention. I think to literally write "TLDR:" is rather unpleasant and gives the impression that you think the reader lazy, and he needs overly obvious pointers.
So from now on, I resolve to use "HEY LOOKIT, THIS HERE'S A SUMMARY:" instead of "TLDR:".
In newspaper journalism the principle used to be to write the essential information first and then go into additional details the further you got into the article. When space was running tight, editors would simple chop off the bottom of articles to make them fit without needing to rewrite anything.
I find that the web page layout gives hints as to whether it is just eyeballs harvesting. Ads in the margins and interspersed with the content: probably a good idea to fast forward to the end.
I do wish that pay-walled sites were somehow marked on HN. Far too often I click on an interesting headline only to be met with a bunch of ads and a demand for payment to read any further.
Unless there's an existing, explicit contract, only assumed, implicit contracts apply - and it's unlikely "I, the author, will spend a lot of time creating a concise summary to prove my writing is worth your time", is one of them.
> On the web, we can't flip (unless it's a PDF, which may even be worse).
I am struggling here. A webpage is the easiest document to search through, in multiple senses of search.
> Well written, summary-first content can tell you this quickly and potentially save you hours each week.
Agreed, but creating high quality summaries are extremely expensive. It's very very hard to be concise. Unless there's already an existing, explicit contract in place to compensate the author for making this effort, why would any smart person do it?