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TL;DR as used by a producer of content should be used as a summary. Tag your article with the details you feel are most important; if they pique the interest of

by TheCapn 14y ago

TL;DR as used by a producer of content should be used as a summary. Tag your article with the details you feel are most important; if they pique the interest of a reader they'll read the whole thing. TL;DR as a consumer should be used to indicate the content you are reading isn't written well. "I got this far in and it hasn't kept my attention. Abandoning the effort". A user calling tl;dr can be rude, but it does mean whatever you've posted is not engaging the reader's interest.

klibertp 14y ago
> it does mean whatever you've posted is not engaging the reader's interest Or not. It can well mean that the reader saw how much text you wrote and went away after reading the title (or not even this) because he just doesn't like to read or has attention span of 30 seconds at most. In my experience "tl;dr" is much more often a sign of laziness and/or being impaired in the field of literacy than it is legitimate complaint about how well the text was written. It's so stupid I really can't stand it; not too long ago, when my colleague used the phrase in this sense, I had to ask him: "Why are you proud to be illiterate?". This is what "tl;dr" really means: that someone can't read efficiently, has no intention of changing this and is perfectly happy that all the knowledge he'll ever get will be shallow and fragmentary. From what I see this attitude often spreads into other areas, like reasoning, arguing and even just chatting - in effect such a person is dull, uninteresting and frequently incapable of any deeper insight. I don't think there is hard scientific data on this, but I do think it's time to gather some. And to invent a cure, because - for me at least - it seems like a disease. There are legitimate uses for that damned phrase, but they are few and far between. In your example - is it really that hard to write, as you wrote: "I got this far in and it hasn't kept my attention. Abandoning the effort"? Why would you like to replace these two sentences with a "tl;dr"? I can think of but one reason I would consider legitimate and it is the case of major disability which makes writing that much harder for the one commenting. There could be other good reasons, but laziness and illiteracy are not among them.
- sillysaurus 14y ago
  Absolutely. It is a disease -- one I suffered from and cured myself of. It took being abandoned by a close friend to realize that there was a problem.

by TheCapn 14y ago

klibertp 14y ago

> it does mean whatever you've posted is not engaging the reader's interest Or not. It can well mean that the reader saw how much text you wrote and went away after reading the title (or not even this) because he just doesn't like to read or has attention span of 30 seconds at most. In my experience "tl;dr" is much more often a sign of laziness and/or being impaired in the field of literacy than it is legitimate complaint about how well the text was written. It's so stupid I really can't stand it; not too long ago, when my colleague used the phrase in this sense, I had to ask him: "Why are you proud to be illiterate?". This is what "tl;dr" really means: that someone can't read efficiently, has no intention of changing this and is perfectly happy that all the knowledge he'll ever get will be shallow and fragmentary. From what I see this attitude often spreads into other areas, like reasoning, arguing and even just chatting - in effect such a person is dull, uninteresting and frequently incapable of any deeper insight. I don't think there is hard scientific data on this, but I do think it's time to gather some. And to invent a cure, because - for me at least - it seems like a disease. There are legitimate uses for that damned phrase, but they are few and far between. In your example - is it really that hard to write, as you wrote: "I got this far in and it hasn't kept my attention. Abandoning the effort"? Why would you like to replace these two sentences with a "tl;dr"? I can think of but one reason I would consider legitimate and it is the case of major disability which makes writing that much harder for the one commenting. There could be other good reasons, but laziness and illiteracy are not among them.

sillysaurus 14y ago
Absolutely. It is a disease -- one I suffered from and cured myself of. It took being abandoned by a close friend to realize that there was a problem.