3 ms·

17 MB for 5900 words. And you are getting downvoted for pointing out the obvious.

diggan 9y ago
It's true that it's a waste and a shame that it's the new normal today. But the person is not being downvoted for pointing out something obvious, the person is being downvoted for not adding to the conversation that is relevant, the actual content of the letter. But by all means, create a new post or link a blogpost in a new submission on how terrible this world we live in with 2MB of JS for just a bit of text. I would agree with that sentiment. But when the topic is optimism, foundation spending, education and other topics, the size of the embedded JS is simply not interesting.
- dna_polymerase 9y ago
  > But when the topic is optimism, foundation spending, education and other topics, the size of the embedded JS is simply not interesting. Okay, look at it this way. If it was all about the foundation and the content of the page it would look like a Word Document. Just a wall of text, maybe some graphics with stats. But this is not the case here. Somehow the Gates Foundation decided they need 17MB of sugar to get this message out. If the JS to content ratio is that blatant I'd argue that they know they don't have anything of value to say.
- carlmr 9y ago
  Both the content and the execution are worth mentioning. Especially on an article about inequality of access. 17MB text is not an issue if you're in one of the few broadband enabled rich locations of the world. But there are large parts of the world where you'd need a few hours on dial-up to read this article. Heck, even a sizeable portion of Americans are still on dial-up (https://www.dailydot.com/debug/dvd-rental-windows-3-aol-2017/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/dvd-rental-windows-3-aol-2017...),
  - diggan 9y ago
    > Especially on an article about inequality of access I did not read the full article, only skimmed. If this is mentioned then yes, it's very relevant and indeed valuable to discuss. Thanks for bringing that up and I agree, 17MB is not very accessible, and bit weird to talk about inequality of access when serving so huge pages that won't even work in some parts of the world. With that said, tcd did not mention the same things as you did. There was no reaction about "article about inequality of access when your site is not accessible!", but more of a knee-jerk reaction of "Large JS, boo!". That's the part that is not constructive and I'm guessing, is why it was downvoted.
    - carlmr 9y ago
      >I did not read the full article, only skimmed. If this is mentioned then yes, it's very relevant and indeed valuable to discuss. Thanks for bringing that up and I agree, 17MB is not very accessible, and bit weird to talk about inequality of access when serving so huge pages that won't even work in some parts of the world. It's not talking directly about inequality of access to websites. But inequality of access to education, vaccinations and other things is one of the general themes in the blog post. So it's only slightly hypocritical. >With that said, tcd did not mention the same things as you did. There was no reaction about "article about inequality of access when your site is not accessible!", but more of a knee-jerk reaction of "Large JS, boo!". That's the part that is not constructive and I'm guessing, is why it was downvoted. True, I think the comments might really be the wrong place to bring this up. It would be kind of cool to have the ranking algorithms on Google, Reddit, HN and other webpages downrank pages with large non-content sections. I'm not sure if such a metric is feasible without accidentally blocking some good pages, but we need harder measures to fight this internet cancer.

It's true that it's a waste and a shame that it's the new normal today. But the person is not being downvoted for pointing out something obvious, the person is being downvoted for not adding to the conversation that is relevant, the actual content of the letter. But by all means, create a new post or link a blogpost in a new submission on how terrible this world we live in with 2MB of JS for just a bit of text. I would agree with that sentiment. But when the topic is optimism, foundation spending, education and other topics, the size of the embedded JS is simply not interesting.

dna_polymerase 9y ago
> But when the topic is optimism, foundation spending, education and other topics, the size of the embedded JS is simply not interesting. Okay, look at it this way. If it was all about the foundation and the content of the page it would look like a Word Document. Just a wall of text, maybe some graphics with stats. But this is not the case here. Somehow the Gates Foundation decided they need 17MB of sugar to get this message out. If the JS to content ratio is that blatant I'd argue that they know they don't have anything of value to say.
carlmr 9y ago
Both the content and the execution are worth mentioning. Especially on an article about inequality of access. 17MB text is not an issue if you're in one of the few broadband enabled rich locations of the world. But there are large parts of the world where you'd need a few hours on dial-up to read this article. Heck, even a sizeable portion of Americans are still on dial-up (https://www.dailydot.com/debug/dvd-rental-windows-3-aol-2017/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/dvd-rental-windows-3-aol-2017...),
- diggan 9y ago
  > Especially on an article about inequality of access I did not read the full article, only skimmed. If this is mentioned then yes, it's very relevant and indeed valuable to discuss. Thanks for bringing that up and I agree, 17MB is not very accessible, and bit weird to talk about inequality of access when serving so huge pages that won't even work in some parts of the world. With that said, tcd did not mention the same things as you did. There was no reaction about "article about inequality of access when your site is not accessible!", but more of a knee-jerk reaction of "Large JS, boo!". That's the part that is not constructive and I'm guessing, is why it was downvoted.
  - carlmr 9y ago
    >I did not read the full article, only skimmed. If this is mentioned then yes, it's very relevant and indeed valuable to discuss. Thanks for bringing that up and I agree, 17MB is not very accessible, and bit weird to talk about inequality of access when serving so huge pages that won't even work in some parts of the world. It's not talking directly about inequality of access to websites. But inequality of access to education, vaccinations and other things is one of the general themes in the blog post. So it's only slightly hypocritical. >With that said, tcd did not mention the same things as you did. There was no reaction about "article about inequality of access when your site is not accessible!", but more of a knee-jerk reaction of "Large JS, boo!". That's the part that is not constructive and I'm guessing, is why it was downvoted. True, I think the comments might really be the wrong place to bring this up. It would be kind of cool to have the ranking algorithms on Google, Reddit, HN and other webpages downrank pages with large non-content sections. I'm not sure if such a metric is feasible without accidentally blocking some good pages, but we need harder measures to fight this internet cancer.