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Maybe it's just me, but I'm not so much of a fan of Dialogs as demonstrated here, especially when there are a lot of characters, each of which have a different

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not so much of a fan of Dialogs as demonstrated here, especially when there are a lot of characters, each of which have a different role that is only communicated by going to a separate page to read about them. If I wanted to explain something in an article I was writing, I would just explain it in the same way I'd do everything else, with a separate paragraph, maybe with some links to relevant sources that I used to become familiar with the topic too

dcminter 2y ago
It takes a lot of skill on the part of the author - I don't think I'd risk it personally. But I like the way it's handled on fasterthanli.me enormously - the author there successfully anticipates a lot of my "wait, but..." thoughts and addresses them directly via this mechanism, or, conversely, makes me realise that I ought to have had an objection to the point they're making.
- voidUpdate 2y ago
  I've just read a couple of their articles, and I think an aside works nicely, just a note about something, but a full on dialog is a bit much. I suppose a lot of my concern was with how Xe Iaso does it, where it just feels over the top and unnecessary, and IMO distracts from the actual content of the article, which is otherwise largely enjoyable
  - xena 2y ago
    It is a very hard thing to calibrate. I try to have my internal conflicts and the like get put onto the canvas. I imagine that part of the perceived distraction is because of the CSS being bad (I suck at CSS so much). I'll go dig through a few Tailwind examples and see if I can make the messages more compact.
    - voidUpdate 2y ago
      Well I didn't expect you to actually read this haha. I hope I didn't cause any offence, I just struggle to keep your wide character roster in my head with all their specialised roles. The only reason I mentioned you specifically was because I was familiar with you as an example and the source mentioned you, I'm sure others do this to an even larger extent
      - xena 2y ago
        Yeah, I try to compensate for this with a few rules that I undoubtedly fuck up: * Each character has very visually distinct designs (ideally each is as distinct as I can reasonably make them, to the point where I have different artists do each one) * The names have meaning (Aoi means blue, Aoi's hair is blue) * Each character has an archetype that corresponds to a facet of how I understand technology, and their interactions are intended to reflect those internal disagreements or touch on the intentionally placed "learning lies" (the simplifications of how things work intended to give people a starting point for understanding an abstract thing that can later be discarded when they dig into the details and realize that shit's actually complicated) I've been idly considering adding something to the message footer in faint text with a tl;dr like "(the student)" for Aoi, or "(the well-intentioned forum troll)" for Numa. Would that help? I originally was kinda hesitant to do this under the axiom that if you have to explain your art, you fucked it up. I'm willing to concede that it's probably a bad axiom for me to follow here.
        voidUpdate 2y ago
        I was going to suggest having hover text for the characters that just summarises what you already have in the separate bios page, but I've just remembered that doesn't work on mobile haha. Adding faint text might help, though you have to keep accessibility contrast guidelines in mind :P Ultimately, this is just my viewpoint, and your website, so you should do what you feel is best haha
schnable 2y ago
I prefer this in an FAQ format with an omniscient-like asker.
mtlynch 2y ago
Agree. I'd always thought that inline dialogs with fictional characters were more for the author's entertainment than the reader's, so I was surprised OP and others in the thread like them. I have nothing against them if people like them; just a matter of taste.
WorldMaker 2y ago
Dialogs are definitely an interesting form of writing, especially for technical writing. On the one hand, it's a deeply natural format with a long and complex history (the Socratic Method, especially, but certainly not alone). On the other hand, we've long disassociated it from "professional writing" which is to supposed to only have one proscribed argument and one direct viewpoint (likely, but not always, the author's). Somewhere in the middle, is decades of the "…for Dummies" technical manual formula and its stock dialog characters and the love affair many had (or still have) with "The Poignant Guide to Ruby". Dialogs can definitely be hard to read in the context of just reading a single blog post because you don't have a familiarity with that author's characters and most blog authors don't have a "shared universe" of characters. I wonder if there's an interesting world where for instance the Dummies characters were considered to be public domain at the right time or more blog writers felt confident with _why's unique voices to turn Poignant's characters into a modern "Punch & Judy" for technical writing. The Socratic Method worked because everyone had a shared intuition on the characters of the day (in part because many were famous Senators and/or Wrestlers): Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, etc. (Also, Plato was his wrestling name, these were absolutely characters.) Maybe if we want to use more Dialogs in blog posts easily we need better shared characters?
nayuki 2y ago
3Blue1Brown makes some of his videos with a lightweight dialog format too.
layer8 2y ago
Agreed. I can rarely identify with the character(s) I’m supposed to identify with, and it’s virtually always a tedious read. It’s also possible to use a question-answer style without having a dialog and characters. What would that look like? Well, similar to this very paragraph. Not that I would particularly recommend it either.

dcminter 2y ago

It takes a lot of skill on the part of the author - I don't think I'd risk it personally. But I like the way it's handled on fasterthanli.me enormously - the author there successfully anticipates a lot of my "wait, but..." thoughts and addresses them directly via this mechanism, or, conversely, makes me realise that I ought to have had an objection to the point they're making.

voidUpdate 2y ago
I've just read a couple of their articles, and I think an aside works nicely, just a note about something, but a full on dialog is a bit much. I suppose a lot of my concern was with how Xe Iaso does it, where it just feels over the top and unnecessary, and IMO distracts from the actual content of the article, which is otherwise largely enjoyable
- xena 2y ago
  It is a very hard thing to calibrate. I try to have my internal conflicts and the like get put onto the canvas. I imagine that part of the perceived distraction is because of the CSS being bad (I suck at CSS so much). I'll go dig through a few Tailwind examples and see if I can make the messages more compact.
  - voidUpdate 2y ago
    Well I didn't expect you to actually read this haha. I hope I didn't cause any offence, I just struggle to keep your wide character roster in my head with all their specialised roles. The only reason I mentioned you specifically was because I was familiar with you as an example and the source mentioned you, I'm sure others do this to an even larger extent
    - xena 2y ago
      Yeah, I try to compensate for this with a few rules that I undoubtedly fuck up: * Each character has very visually distinct designs (ideally each is as distinct as I can reasonably make them, to the point where I have different artists do each one) * The names have meaning (Aoi means blue, Aoi's hair is blue) * Each character has an archetype that corresponds to a facet of how I understand technology, and their interactions are intended to reflect those internal disagreements or touch on the intentionally placed "learning lies" (the simplifications of how things work intended to give people a starting point for understanding an abstract thing that can later be discarded when they dig into the details and realize that shit's actually complicated) I've been idly considering adding something to the message footer in faint text with a tl;dr like "(the student)" for Aoi, or "(the well-intentioned forum troll)" for Numa. Would that help? I originally was kinda hesitant to do this under the axiom that if you have to explain your art, you fucked it up. I'm willing to concede that it's probably a bad axiom for me to follow here.
      - voidUpdate 2y ago
        I was going to suggest having hover text for the characters that just summarises what you already have in the separate bios page, but I've just remembered that doesn't work on mobile haha. Adding faint text might help, though you have to keep accessibility contrast guidelines in mind :P Ultimately, this is just my viewpoint, and your website, so you should do what you feel is best haha

schnable 2y ago

I prefer this in an FAQ format with an omniscient-like asker.

mtlynch 2y ago

Agree. I'd always thought that inline dialogs with fictional characters were more for the author's entertainment than the reader's, so I was surprised OP and others in the thread like them. I have nothing against them if people like them; just a matter of taste.

WorldMaker 2y ago

Dialogs are definitely an interesting form of writing, especially for technical writing. On the one hand, it's a deeply natural format with a long and complex history (the Socratic Method, especially, but certainly not alone). On the other hand, we've long disassociated it from "professional writing" which is to supposed to only have one proscribed argument and one direct viewpoint (likely, but not always, the author's). Somewhere in the middle, is decades of the "…for Dummies" technical manual formula and its stock dialog characters and the love affair many had (or still have) with "The Poignant Guide to Ruby". Dialogs can definitely be hard to read in the context of just reading a single blog post because you don't have a familiarity with that author's characters and most blog authors don't have a "shared universe" of characters. I wonder if there's an interesting world where for instance the Dummies characters were considered to be public domain at the right time or more blog writers felt confident with _why's unique voices to turn Poignant's characters into a modern "Punch & Judy" for technical writing. The Socratic Method worked because everyone had a shared intuition on the characters of the day (in part because many were famous Senators and/or Wrestlers): Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, etc. (Also, Plato was his wrestling name, these were absolutely characters.) Maybe if we want to use more Dialogs in blog posts easily we need better shared characters?

nayuki 2y ago

3Blue1Brown makes some of his videos with a lightweight dialog format too.

layer8 2y ago

Agreed. I can rarely identify with the character(s) I’m supposed to identify with, and it’s virtually always a tedious read. It’s also possible to use a question-answer style without having a dialog and characters. What would that look like? Well, similar to this very paragraph. Not that I would particularly recommend it either.