I don't agree with forcing cuts on people, for largely teh same reasons Rachel Lee Cherry has given.
I don't agree with having an automatic blocking of Twitter built in in Dreamwidth. I don't like Twitter, but I dislike censorship even less. If Automatic implies the DW will block it for you - that they will take it ut of your hands and cover your eyes for you. I don't think that's going to happen. The best you can hope for, my guess is, a userscript that will hide twitter posts for you. One that works with Opera, Safari, Firefox. I hope you can find someone to write that. On 4/16/09, Rachel Lee Cherry <[email protected]> wrote: > 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. > _______________________________________________ dw-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.dwscoalition.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dw-discuss
