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I've seen this done, and effectively. Site in Russian: https://www.agents.media/rutube-kremlin/ https://www.agents.media/rutube-kremlin/ Basically, instead of

I've seen this done, and effectively. Site in Russian: https://www.agents.media/rutube-kremlin/ https://www.agents.media/rutube-kremlin/ Basically, instead of footnote markers, you present ellipses inline. When readers click the ellipses, the page expands additional text in place. That can be a separate sentence or a continuation of the contextual one. If you reach an ellipsis and you want to know more, you click it. Or you don't. There's no page-wide lever for level of detail. It's more granular than that. There's also a summary and outline at the top.

mananaysiempre 5y ago
This technique was also used by (at least) the ill-fated English version of The Correspondent and the still-surviving (if almost banned) Russian media outlet Meduza. It’s kind of awkward on touchscreens, though, and near-unusable with (stock) keyboard navigation. I haven’t really seen a case where it would have an advantage over sidenotes on a wide screen.
- kemitchell 5y ago
  I never noticed it on Meduza. Thank you for mentioning. It doesn't seem to me that Агенство and Медуза are using the same content management system. I wonder: Is there a longer history of this kind of expandable note in the Russian blogosphere? It feels very Art Lebedev to me, but I couldn't say why.
  - mananaysiempre 5y ago
    Not that I know of, no. The Russian blogosphere as I knew it in its heyday (not very well) just used whatever LiveJournal was capable of producing without much configuration, for the most part, so you had the “cut” used to delimit either the hook or an abstract (под катом [pət 'katəm] is used as the rough Runet-speak equivalent of “below the fold” even today), but not much else. As best as I can tell it was around the time of the English-language The Correspondent hype (either pre- or post-launch—I remember there was a whole section about this one gimmick in the marketing materials) that Meduza introduced these quasi-footnotes, so I guess I just assumed they saw them there and decided they wanted the same thing for themselves. No idea about the real history though.

mananaysiempre 5y ago

This technique was also used by (at least) the ill-fated English version of The Correspondent and the still-surviving (if almost banned) Russian media outlet Meduza. It’s kind of awkward on touchscreens, though, and near-unusable with (stock) keyboard navigation. I haven’t really seen a case where it would have an advantage over sidenotes on a wide screen.

kemitchell 5y ago
I never noticed it on Meduza. Thank you for mentioning. It doesn't seem to me that Агенство and Медуза are using the same content management system. I wonder: Is there a longer history of this kind of expandable note in the Russian blogosphere? It feels very Art Lebedev to me, but I couldn't say why.
- mananaysiempre 5y ago
  Not that I know of, no. The Russian blogosphere as I knew it in its heyday (not very well) just used whatever LiveJournal was capable of producing without much configuration, for the most part, so you had the “cut” used to delimit either the hook or an abstract (под катом [pət 'katəm] is used as the rough Runet-speak equivalent of “below the fold” even today), but not much else. As best as I can tell it was around the time of the English-language The Correspondent hype (either pre- or post-launch—I remember there was a whole section about this one gimmick in the marketing materials) that Meduza introduced these quasi-footnotes, so I guess I just assumed they saw them there and decided they wanted the same thing for themselves. No idea about the real history though.