5 ms·

Maybe if they are writing for Reader's Digest or some other generic media, but anyone talking about the details of bar ends is writing for a specific audience;

by skeeter2020 5y ago

Maybe if they are writing for Reader's Digest or some other generic media, but anyone talking about the details of bar ends is writing for a specific audience; they are far better to focus on their core demo and alienate the masses than try and get everyone up to speed. Readers don't deserve special treatment, it's completely at the discretion of the author. And a quick image search for "bar ends" literally gives you hundreds of pictures of exaclty what they are talking about.

natch 5y ago
That’s the standard (and sadly mistaken imho) answer for this everywhere. It’s a kind of gatekeeping reaction (the article is not meant for you) that doesn’t acknowledge that people today read far and wide. The Google thing is a fair point, but having a text definition inline is literally hundreds of times faster, and zero touch, and friendly for screen readers, and doesn’t slow in-the-know readers down a bit because our eyes and brains are so good at flitting past that stuff.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  This isn't gatekeeping; it's simply acknowledging that an article written for a certain audience may assume a certain level of background knowledge. People who are interested and want to learn more are free to look up any words and concepts they don't know. Nobody's going to shame them for doing that. It's simply not realistic to expect every author to anticipate and try to fill every possible reader's intellectual lacunae. I mean, imagine if that other article on the front page today, "Writing Pythonic Rust," had to explain what Pythonic means, and what Rust is, what an API and a wrapper is, what type foundries and font proofs are, and oh my goodness that's just the technical jargon I wouldn't expect a general audience to understand from the first 4 sentences.
  - natch 5y ago
    I agree with most of what you said. However, I also think you've done a good job in showcasing some extreme examples of how my suggestion could be taken too far. Such an extreme take would be undesirable. But it could be done with moderation, as appropriate, such as when an entire article is about why a thing has gone away (and, since it has gone away, almost by definition there will be interested readers who do not know what it is). There are always tradeoffs to be made in good writing.
    - mumblemumble 5y ago
      Compare bar ends to 3.5mm headphone jacks. You don't see them around that much anymore, but it wasn't that long ago that they were common. You'd expect someone who has basically any level of interest in audio equipment to be aware of their existence, even if they've never personally used one. I suppose I don't spend much time talking to very young mountain bikers, so maybe there's a generational thing going on, but I would assume it's the same there. And, like 3.5mm headphone jacks, new equipment may not have them, but they're not gone gone. I saw some people riding with them last time I was on a trail. Also, this complaint seems just a little bit forced given that the title image on the article is a picture of a bar end. Even someone who's not familiar with mountain biking should be able to take a look at that picture and hazard a pretty successful guess.
      - natch 5y ago
        I addressed the picture already in my comments above. I really can't tell what's a bar end in that picture. I even did an image search and the images are all over the map. The shapes of what is shown in the search are incredibly diverse and don't clarify much. Point is, I just don't get the resistance here. I mean, the belief that articles should not explain the basic thing that their topic is about, just blows my mind. I'm not talking about every term in the article. I'm talking about the main item that is discussed.
        mumblemumble 5y ago
        If you search for just "bar end", you will get a bunch of different things from different domains. If you image search "bar end mountain bike" in order to narrow the domain, you'll get pictures of nothing but the thing the article is talking about. I think the resistance here is that what you're saying comes across entitled. It sounds like you're trying to put the onus on anyone who writes an article ever to try and cater to your needs, on the off chance that a fairly technical article they write on their highly topical biking blog might, in some black swan event, end up on the front page of Hacker News and attract your attention. This article is under no more obligation to explain what a bar end is than an article about SOLID design is to define the term "object." Heck, if I did something like that every time I used those terms here on Hacker News, people wouldn't think I'm being helpful, they'd think I'm insulting their intelligence.

natch 5y ago

That’s the standard (and sadly mistaken imho) answer for this everywhere. It’s a kind of gatekeeping reaction (the article is not meant for you) that doesn’t acknowledge that people today read far and wide. The Google thing is a fair point, but having a text definition inline is literally hundreds of times faster, and zero touch, and friendly for screen readers, and doesn’t slow in-the-know readers down a bit because our eyes and brains are so good at flitting past that stuff.

mumblemumble 5y ago
This isn't gatekeeping; it's simply acknowledging that an article written for a certain audience may assume a certain level of background knowledge. People who are interested and want to learn more are free to look up any words and concepts they don't know. Nobody's going to shame them for doing that. It's simply not realistic to expect every author to anticipate and try to fill every possible reader's intellectual lacunae. I mean, imagine if that other article on the front page today, "Writing Pythonic Rust," had to explain what Pythonic means, and what Rust is, what an API and a wrapper is, what type foundries and font proofs are, and oh my goodness that's just the technical jargon I wouldn't expect a general audience to understand from the first 4 sentences.
- natch 5y ago
  I agree with most of what you said. However, I also think you've done a good job in showcasing some extreme examples of how my suggestion could be taken too far. Such an extreme take would be undesirable. But it could be done with moderation, as appropriate, such as when an entire article is about why a thing has gone away (and, since it has gone away, almost by definition there will be interested readers who do not know what it is). There are always tradeoffs to be made in good writing.
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    Compare bar ends to 3.5mm headphone jacks. You don't see them around that much anymore, but it wasn't that long ago that they were common. You'd expect someone who has basically any level of interest in audio equipment to be aware of their existence, even if they've never personally used one. I suppose I don't spend much time talking to very young mountain bikers, so maybe there's a generational thing going on, but I would assume it's the same there. And, like 3.5mm headphone jacks, new equipment may not have them, but they're not gone gone. I saw some people riding with them last time I was on a trail. Also, this complaint seems just a little bit forced given that the title image on the article is a picture of a bar end. Even someone who's not familiar with mountain biking should be able to take a look at that picture and hazard a pretty successful guess.
    - natch 5y ago
      I addressed the picture already in my comments above. I really can't tell what's a bar end in that picture. I even did an image search and the images are all over the map. The shapes of what is shown in the search are incredibly diverse and don't clarify much. Point is, I just don't get the resistance here. I mean, the belief that articles should not explain the basic thing that their topic is about, just blows my mind. I'm not talking about every term in the article. I'm talking about the main item that is discussed.
      - mumblemumble 5y ago
        If you search for just "bar end", you will get a bunch of different things from different domains. If you image search "bar end mountain bike" in order to narrow the domain, you'll get pictures of nothing but the thing the article is talking about. I think the resistance here is that what you're saying comes across entitled. It sounds like you're trying to put the onus on anyone who writes an article ever to try and cater to your needs, on the off chance that a fairly technical article they write on their highly topical biking blog might, in some black swan event, end up on the front page of Hacker News and attract your attention. This article is under no more obligation to explain what a bar end is than an article about SOLID design is to define the term "object." Heck, if I did something like that every time I used those terms here on Hacker News, people wouldn't think I'm being helpful, they'd think I'm insulting their intelligence.