Long Article Complaints

Users repeatedly criticize the excessive length of articles linked on Hacker News, demanding TL;DR summaries, bullet points, or more concise writing to respect readers' time.

➡️ Stable 0.6x Other
4,683
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#3504
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Keywords

RFC TL lipsum.com ThinkCode.TV ThinkCode TLDR BLUF DR TV NLP concise tl tl dr paragraphs read article dr written words substack

Sample Comments

hathym Jun 16, 2016 View on HN

I am really tired of long articles. how hard is it to provide a few bullet points or a two lines summury for people that do no afford to read the entire page?

xchip Jul 6, 2016 View on HN

Yet another super long article that could be summarized in a couple of lines.

thejerz Feb 20, 2013 View on HN

No, I mean the article was too long and it could have been stated in fewer words. I am not trolling.

enasterosophes Nov 8, 2023 View on HN

This article is too long. It should simply say: "Be concise."

symlinkk Feb 25, 2021 View on HN

Good lord what a long winded article. Just get to the point.

mdevere May 1, 2017 View on HN

why are these articles always so pointlessly long. who wants to read all this meandering tangential bullshit when it can be distilled down into two paragraphs at most.

loloquwowndueo Oct 20, 2021 View on HN

“ I realize that this article is quite long, and unfortunately this is the short version. Much nuance and history is lost here, even though the post is already long enough that it is destined for the limbo of a bookmarks folder called "to read later". Despite the fact that no one will read more than the next 3 paragraphs…” - pro tip - if you want to make the article shorter and easier to read don’t spend an entire paragraph blabbering about how long it is and how nobody reads anymore.

PuffinBlue May 27, 2016 View on HN

I know that 'tl;dr' is frowned upon here but this particular tl;dr is better written and just as in depth as the article itself.

read Apr 23, 2014 View on HN

I wish posts like this reduced their content to more concise descriptions so more people would finish reading them.

eru Apr 15, 2010 View on HN

The text could use some shortening.