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> This has a ton of great information and background but could definitely use some splitting up and organizing Page length issues seem to bother a lot of peopl

> This has a ton of great information and background but could definitely use some splitting up and organizing Page length issues seem to bother a lot of people. I wrote a long one-page web article myself recently, and everybody said it was too long and needed to be split up and organized. So I split the article at the section headings into separate web pages. Everybody who had complained earlier said that my "reedit" was now much better. But really I didn't make any change other than splitting it into separate web pages. Now, I do understand the value of paragraphs, spacing, and section headings. It's much easier visually. But I never understood the distaste for long web pages. (Obviously, it should be related material, like a story.) It seems that some readers prefer 5 separate web pages (that must be read contiguously) rather than a single page with five section headings. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I prefer the single page.

intortus 12y ago
I actually did read through the entire article in one sitting, but to be honest I'm surprised I did. My time spent is usually too fractured to permit this long a focus on anything that isn't either work or passive entertainment. I can see how one can become dependent on more episodic consumption, designed to give clear break points and bring one comfortably back into the context at a later point when ready to continue. Those crutches would be comforting even if one ends up "binging" on the entire piece anyway.
manicdee 12y ago
Perhaps the problem was the navigation of the page? Perhaps there's something psychologically satisfying about being able to finish five smaller reading tasks than one larger reading task? I have found that if the text doesn't fit on one screen, it's more enjoyable for me to read the content as an ePub than as a long scrolling web page. This doesn't mean I enjoy reading "news" sites which split the content into 25 pages of one paragraph each, just so they can squeeze a dozen more adverts into the page.

intortus 12y ago

I actually did read through the entire article in one sitting, but to be honest I'm surprised I did. My time spent is usually too fractured to permit this long a focus on anything that isn't either work or passive entertainment. I can see how one can become dependent on more episodic consumption, designed to give clear break points and bring one comfortably back into the context at a later point when ready to continue. Those crutches would be comforting even if one ends up "binging" on the entire piece anyway.

manicdee 12y ago

Perhaps the problem was the navigation of the page? Perhaps there's something psychologically satisfying about being able to finish five smaller reading tasks than one larger reading task? I have found that if the text doesn't fit on one screen, it's more enjoyable for me to read the content as an ePub than as a long scrolling web page. This doesn't mean I enjoy reading "news" sites which split the content into 25 pages of one paragraph each, just so they can squeeze a dozen more adverts into the page.