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>I don't understand this comment at all. [...] Why even both writing a waste of a comment? I understand where the op's reading frustration is coming from. For
by jasode 6y ago
>I don't understand this comment at all. [...] Why even both writing a waste of a comment?
I understand where the op's reading frustration is coming from. For some urls that point to pdf files or racy content, we might put informal warning tags such as "[pdf]" or "[NSFW]". But there really isn't a meta tag such as "[human_interest_story]" to warn readers of this type of article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-interest_story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-interest_story
There's nothing wrong with human interest stories (and even long form texts of it) but it's tedious for many who aren't expecting it. (I.e. some global readers aren't familiar with TexasMonthly and its editorial focus on long-form human interest articles.)
One type of reader just wants the mechanics of the insurance fraud explained. Thus, the human names -- whoever they are -- are not important -- because they will be forgotten 5 seconds after finishing the article. If it's the "wildest" insurance fraud, what makes it more wild than other insurance scams? Unfortunately, many articles "trick" readers with a compelling title about some <situation> but the actual article is mostly about <person(s)>. Some readers care more about details of the insurance deception than the escapades of Mr. TR Wright.
Another example of this mis-alignment between some readers and the author is the "Why it's so hard to find dumbbells in the US (vox.com)" article that was on HN front page today. The actual article starts off with human-interest stuff by mentioning people like like Andrew, Logan, Fread, etc and goes on like that for many paragraphs. But the HN top-voted comment extracts the relevant explanation that actually answers the question put forth in the title:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24270770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24270770
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago> One type of reader just wants the mechanics of the insurance fraud explained. Exactly me. And I was not familiar with TexasMonthly, despite having lived in the US (California) for the last 8 years. (I am originally from Europe)
- bluedevil2k 6y agoThen go to Wikipedia and look up "insurance fraud".
- ryandrake 6y agoI think it's an expectation mismatch. It's jarring to expect to read a concise, structured news article, and instead start reading "It was a dark and stormy night..." We don't just have news articles here, but we have no way of tagging links as [long reads].