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This subject is interesting to me, sorry for the rant. Writers could try to split up their work to better appeal to an audience that does quick scans, then rea
by dartos 2y ago
This subject is interesting to me, sorry for the rant.
Writers could try to split up their work to better appeal to an audience that does quick scans, then reads where it matters.
This article may be great, but there’s not even any section headings, so I’m not able to gauge my own interest.
In our era where there is so much content to consume and where so much of it is just hot garbage or advertising, I don’t want to spend time deeply reading everything in hopes that I care about it.
I need to be able to asses that at a glance, then dive in if I deem it meaningful enough.
Writers should probably change their style to accommodate their audience (if they care about really wide reach)
- klum 2y agoSpeculating here but I'd say a big part of the reason Dan Luu has as big a reach as he has is that he isn't the kind of writer who'll change his style to accommodate the audience that just wants to do a quick scan.
- dartos 2y agoMaybe, but I don’t know Dan. Never read anything written by them (besides this) I’d like to read deeply about something interesting, but with so much LLM slop around, I’m much less willing to dive right into a long article.
- CamperBob2 2y agoWriters could try to split up their work to better appeal to an audience that does quick scans, then reads where it matters. That was one of the original visions behind hypertext - that it would not only link documents together, but provide a way to summarize the content at varying levels of detail, allowing up-down traversal rather than just lateral links. MIP mapping for text, basically. We're starting to see a bit of a revival of that idea, where language models generate summaries at the paragraph level that readers can either browse quickly or use as a jumping-off point into the underlying original content. This page seems like a good application for that.
- nottorp 2y ago> so much content to consume Well, I'd say part of the problem is you think of yourself as a content consumer. How things are called can be important.
- dartos 2y agoWe all are content consumers. It’s not a problem, just a fact. You consumed my content (my comment) and are now creating your own. What you spend your attention on is much more important now than even 10 years ago.
- nottorp 2y agoActually I'd call your comment an opinion, not "content". Unless, of course, you're commenting here in order to create "engagement" for monetary gain. But it does look to me like you're trying to have a conversation, which is an entirely different animal.
- dartos 2y agoThose are not mutually exclusive. We are both creating content which hacker news serves up to people who read comments. We’re not the only ones this conversation is seen by. Hacker news is, among other things, a platform for YC to find talent and advertise its startups. People come here both for the posts and comments. The content we create and post here have clear commercial purpose even though we as the creators don’t necessarily benefit or care. Welcome to the internet.
- nottorp 2y agoYou're talking about the goals of the platform hosting us for free. I'm talking about our personal motivation, regardless of platform. And I'm trying to say that when the motivation is to 'create content' the result is worthless, and I think you're doing yourself a disservice accepting that.
- 2y ago