7 ms·
I cannot stand those long form articles. The headline picked my interest, the lead text is intriguing but the first paragraph that starts to describe a bright,
by clon 6y ago
I cannot stand those long form articles. The headline picked my interest, the lead text is intriguing but the first paragraph that starts to describe a bright, warm morning or the attire or the facial features of a "lead character" immediately takes the wind out of my sails. How can anyone place so little value on their time as to be able afford to consume material that is so sparse in information?
- kapakos 6y agoIf that bothered you, you haven’t looked up food recipes.
- submeta 6y agoExactly my perception. Was looking desperately for an abstract, a TL;DR version, the key takeaways.
- CamperBob2 6y agoThis article was particularly frustrating, because it inspires but never answers an incredibly obvious question: does antioxidant treatment help prevent the effects of sleep deprivation in rats, or only in fruit flies? Surely that would have been the next thing on the researchers' list of things to try. They may have addressed this, and I just missed it. But in general I agree that this isn't the best format for describing this type of research to nonspecialist readers. I don't mind a slight dose of human-interest fluff, but the facts should come first. (I take it from the patented HN instant downvote that the article did, in fact, answer my question, and I just missed it.)
- clon 6y agoLooking at the 'Graphical Abstract' in the excellent link [1] that seesawtron posted, I don't think you did miss anything. [1] https://bit.ly/3cy0C9u https://bit.ly/3cy0C9u
- seesawtron 6y agoCan someone explain how the downvote system works? I guess every user is not allowed to downvote but some users can? Thanks for your insights in advance.
- Xylakant 6y agoIt’s been a while since I was a new member here, but AFAIR, you need to accumulate a bit of karma so you can downvote. This prevents fresh accounts from downvoting.
- xboxnolifes 6y agoI think it's 500 karma, but I'm not sure because I've been here 2 years and still don't have access.
- rrmm 6y agoI'm at around 1000 and have it. I suspect it might be a little above 500? EDIT: dang answers directly (500 or 501): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8381148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8381148 (2014) I try to save downvotes for posts that are actively abusive or hurt the discussion (by being abusive). Not just for stuff I don't like or I find 'low effort' (although I understand why others might have different standards). I also try to be generous with upvotes for everyone who participates with me in good faith.
- CamperBob2 6y agoI have a feeling my comment is being downvoted by people who didn't read the article. In retrospect, I can see where someone might think I'm advocating a quack antioxidant treatment for sleep disorders, or "just asking questions here," or something else besides asking a specific, valid question about the studies. Oh, well.
- rrmm 6y agoYeah people seem extra jumpy these days especially concerning medical articles. I generally just expect it ahead of time and shrug when it happens.
- barrkel 6y agoI too was hanging on throughout the end for that experiment result, but it never came.
- easytiger 6y agoIndeed it's a really common trope. More hook to the core subject is needed before waffle can be tolerated. I imagine some popular course on writing had much to answer for. I suspect this works better in print when you sit down with a cup of tea and a copy of the New Yorker
- seesawtron 6y agoIndeed. I do not want to know about the "cold morning when the researcher walked into the lab..." Like Linus Torvalds say "Just show me the damn code!", these magazine articles love to beat around the bush than lay out the key story points right away. So I skipped directly to the figures and section of the story that talks about changes in ROS levels in gut.
- nothis 6y agoYou’re complaining about two sentences in a 3000 word article. Read on. It’s raw information from there. You are also allowed to skip the pictures.
- wruza 6y agoThe problem is, this way we would spend 72 hours a day on all these 3k word articles for getting one page worth of chitchat material. I bet that tl;dr extension that would allow to jump directly to highlights (or mark them) would be pretty popular. If anyone knows one, please share.
- CamperBob2 6y agoSomething like that could work like existing models that generate abstracts for research papers. I don't know if these techniques have gone mainstream yet, but my understanding is that they are under active development. If you can generate one or two paragraphs that summarize the findings of a paper, it's not much of a stretch to imagine an application that generates pop-sci articles of the desired length.
- watwut 6y agoThere is exactly one paragraph of it. It takes approximately 10 seconds and is easy to skip. Seriously.
- rstuart4133 6y agoThe paper the article is about [0] has a 3 sentence 32 word introduction. Those 32 words tell describe the mechanism they found, and give you a feeling for how likely it is to apply to humans. 3000 words is a big jump. The first paragraph is 94 words long. The article has more than that of course - it's a leisurely introduction to the people behind the discovery and the effort they put it. Nothing wrong with that, it's a worthy story in its own right. But when you click on the headline "Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient?" so discover the 32 words answer to the question in the headline is buried in a 3000 word human interest story, you may feel a little cheated. [0] https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30555-9.pdf https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30555-9.pdf
- wnoise 6y agoThere's one paragraph of that. Then a paragraph talking about the lab being in an apartment building, so that there are bedrooms nearby. Then a paragraph grad students describing their work as "thrilling" to the point of not wanting to graduate. (As an ex-grad student, I have to say "Really?")
- whywhywhywhy 6y agoFanfiction Journalism. If you want to tell a story please just write a book, I don't need your clickbait wrapped up in a quaint little story.
- EmilioMartinez 6y agoWhat's most painful about it is you can feel the writer's desire for a different job.
- sfifs 6y agoLook it's a magazine with long form read intended for people who like such things. You can always skip it and read the abstract of the paper it references :-)
- growlist 6y agoSo true. Details that are so utterly irrelevant and gratuitous that it verges on being an (unintentional) parody of the style: 'On a cold morning this winter, Rogulja leaned over a tablet in her office, her close-cropped dark hair framing a face of elfin intensity'
- pdog 6y agoI thought maybe you were being overly critical and the writing wouldn't be so bad... then I read halfway through this sentence: On a cold morning this winter, Rogulja leaned over a tablet in her office, her close-cropped dark hair framing a face of elfin intensity...
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoIs this your first time witnessing how women write? Were you born yesterday?
- sooheon 6y agoPoe's law strikes again.
- karatestomp 6y ago> framing a face of elfin intensity Oof. Now there's a phrase that belongs in a Lyttle Lytton entry.
- atomize 6y agoSo glad I caught this comment before I gave that article a chance to make me wretch.
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoIt’s how all women write. You’re just saying you hate women.
- antman 6y agoYes, that would be me. I like long form articles, I don’t consider them as part of any pressure or deliverable. I have managed my life by living in a humane environment so as to enjoy rather than be frustrated in small everyday time consuming activities. Of course I would understand if someone would prefer if I simply said “Yes” and I would consider a time waste to fuss about it.
- kiba 6y agoI found tremendous amount of valuable information when I do intensive reading on a long form article, such as historical context, locations of cities and places, and other info that's only loosely related to the topic at home. Like I now know that spaced repetition systems that people uses for studying was a product of Soviet era research by a Polish academic. Though whether it's a warm morning or not is kinda useless to me.
- chmaynard 6y agoNext month's issue will feature a long-form article on why suffocation by a police officer kills.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoWhat? You don't want to see the author literarily jerk themselves off? This is how writers write when they're writing to show of their craft. Of course us uncultured laymen are not going to appreciate it the same way that someone who just wants to build a shelf to put their crap on is not going to appreciate a 45min YouTube video where somebody looking to show off fine woodworking spends an entire weekend building a shelf and someone who wants to just make an omelette is not going to enjoy a video where a master chef freezes frame every 10sec to narrate about the technique needed to wiggle it just right in order to make butter to brown the image of the Mona Lisa into the thing. Whether "performing one's craft in a manner that showcases the capabilities of one's craft" is appropriate for the context is a matter of opinion.
- asdff 6y agoThis isn't showing off their craft, this is like John Hancock's flourish. You can write well and short.
- EmilioMartinez 6y agoAt least there is value in the other examples, and you can quickly tell how the video's going to play out. I sometimes need to pre-skim the whole text just to feel the signal to noise ratio. When will journos dawn on that we don't care about their morning bagels?
- thrownaway954 6y agomost content writers and journalist i know get paid for the amount of content they write. that fluff paragraph that you hate so much added almost 100 word and over 500 characters to article. if you are required to write an article with a minimum length of 2000 words, you just knocked off 5% of your requirement.
- chromatin 6y agoLuckily there was a link to the Cell paper early on. I skipped directly there [0] and there was a wonderful short abstract with key points as well as a graphical abstract that succinctly summarized the findings. [0] https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30555-9.pdf?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867420305559%3Fshowall%3Dtrue https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30555-9.pdf?_ret...
- czzr 6y agoThat graphical abstract is brilliant. All I needed to know in seconds.
- papeda 6y agoThis complaint pops up over and over again on HN. A lot of people like writing that "paints a picture", or like fancy GUIs, or want a website with a bunch of bells and whistles, or small talk without much real information. HN, in general, skews against all of these things (and so do I) but it's not a representative sample of what people in general want.
- sabrehagen 6y agoI came here to express the same sentiment, expecting to be an outlier. The overwhelming response is my perspective. I'm glad it's not just me who wonders "who writes this sh*t". "in their own tubes live other sleepless flies, animated with the calm persistence of those consigned to eternal day." - This hurts my head. This author does not understand communication.
- dvtkrlbs 6y agoI thought it was only me but i bored after the first paragraph and tried skimming through the article but it was too boring.
- todd8 6y agoI’ve let my New Yorker subscription lapse. The writing is great and sometimes, perhaps on a long leisurely train ride across Canada, it might be nice to read these “long form” articles. I was finally just subscribing for the cartoons.
- woodandsteel 6y agoThe reason that the article is written this way is that most human beings enjoy stories about people and events. I assume the reason you don't understand that is you are in this way different from most human beings but are not clearly aware of it.
- qqn 6y agoLol exactly. So I come to the comments in hopes of the tl;dr, which is usually just a sentence.