On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 2:23 PM, Azalais Aranxta <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Apr 2009, Rachel Lee Cherry wrote: > > > On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 1:47 PM, Azalais Aranxta <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > > Can you imagine what a post that size would do to your > > > reading page, uncut? Particularly if it was written by > > > someone who was very angry about some controversial topic and > > > wanted to MAKE YOU READ IT OMG? > > > > That's THEIR decision as the writer of the post. Not your decision as a > > single reader. > > The writer of the post is already, by posting it on a journalling > service and not a blogging service, giving me the option of > reading it in any colour, shape, form I care to, with or without > images. Why is giving me the option to say that only the first > 3, or 5, or 10 paragraphs will appear on my reading page (which > is mine, not part of their journal), and I can then click the > link to get to the rest, any worse than giving me the option to > read it in pink text on a yellow background if I feel like it? > I don't get this. Because it changes what I (as a writer of nonfiction posts) might put in those first few paragraphs. It'd change my writing style to a more newspaper-y format, forcing me to write a lede for any long posts so that readers know what lies beyond the cut. And I'd expect few readers, especially those who've never read my writing before, to click a cut with mysterious contents. Just like paragraphing and the use of asterisks rather than bold formatting (or the <b> tag vs. the <strong> tag), it's one more thing I have to keep in mind when writing a post. And I imagine it'd give fiction writers even *less* space in which to draw readers into the story. They would have to tweak the story to put juicy bits up front, with a certan hard limit of where "up front" is, rather than placing a cut at a natural break in the story -- or in the case of short stories, chopping them up strangely and breaking the flow. > How hypocritical is it to say "Here, have x-thousand characters > > of writing space, but your readers are only ever going to see > > the first 140 characters before being forced to click a cut. > > CHOOSE WISELY"? > > > I don't quite get how that is hypocritical at all. I'm kinda > baffled. > Because on one hand it says "Write lots more! We like long-winded writers!" and on the other hand it says "... As long as you're not *too* longwinded. No one wants to be forced to read your tripe." It's welcoming and limiting at the same time. > (Most of the time, someone has decided whether or not they're > going to read all of a post or not by the end of the second or > third paragraph, anyway.) Yeah, but where the reader makes that decision depends on the text itself -- not an artificial limit imposed by the technology used to read the text. Depends whether the paragraphs are long or short. Depends whether the text is fiction or nonfiction. Depends whether it's a long-ass first sentence followed by dialogue. Readers decide in different places whether to stop reading a news article or a novella. It'd be hard as hell to insert an automatic cutoff that would be kind to both writers. > Particularly if people know it. I also don't think anyone was > proposing a 140 character limit. > It came up as an example upthread (sorry, I lost who used it), but not as a serious suggestion. It was a takeoff on LJ's April Fool's post, which *did* pretend that LJ would be instituting an automatic cut after 140 characters: http://news.livejournal.com/114430.html > > People won't read all of it if they don't want to read all of it > whether or not they have to click a link. The difference is that > people who don't want to read all of it will not also be annoyed > that they have to mouse and mouse and mouse to get past all of > the stuff that they don't want to read. And readers ought to take up their annoyance with the writer, not with the service the writer uses. Dreamwidth can't force people to use good netiquette and shouldn't waste energy trying. ~ Rachel -- http://www.lastsyllable.net http://bohemianeditor.dreamwidth.org This is not the sig you're looking for.
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