I often start posts but they are too long to read them in one go and the fact that I have to do that (or forever forget where I am) creates a big ugh field for me. Solution: Within-post bookmarks! I think it would be amazing if we could mark where we are in a post and the next time, we can just click to get ourselves back there!
(FWIW, I think that’s a major feature of printed media, which I have much less ugh feelings about reading. You can always put it away without it being annoying later on.)
I expect this to be hard to get right, but I think it would in fact remove a major bottleneck to returning to a post. Claim: the hard part is getting people to set their bookmarks. Maybe we could do something automatic?
That’s what I mean by something automatic. I’m not sure without trying it whether it’d be a terrible and disorienting experience that was wrong most of the time, or whether it’d be successfully useful.
Not sure about the claim but possible! I certainly wouldn’t say no to something automatic. But I think if setting it yourself is easy enough, it would still get a bunch of the value! I think if the feature was implemented in a similar way to in-line commenting on LessWrong, where you just hover over the correct line and it offers you a bookmark-button that you just need to click, that would be low-friction enough for people like me to use it. (I think anything that’s two-click might be too much friction)
Within-post bookmarks
I often start posts but they are too long to read them in one go and the fact that I have to do that (or forever forget where I am) creates a big ugh field for me. Solution: Within-post bookmarks! I think it would be amazing if we could mark where we are in a post and the next time, we can just click to get ourselves back there!
(FWIW, I think that’s a major feature of printed media, which I have much less ugh feelings about reading. You can always put it away without it being annoying later on.)
I expect this to be hard to get right, but I think it would in fact remove a major bottleneck to returning to a post. Claim: the hard part is getting people to set their bookmarks. Maybe we could do something automatic?
Would it be possible to track how far down the page someone had scrolled, and by default return them to that place the next time they visited?
That’s what I mean by something automatic. I’m not sure without trying it whether it’d be a terrible and disorienting experience that was wrong most of the time, or whether it’d be successfully useful.
Not sure about the claim but possible! I certainly wouldn’t say no to something automatic. But I think if setting it yourself is easy enough, it would still get a bunch of the value! I think if the feature was implemented in a similar way to in-line commenting on LessWrong, where you just hover over the correct line and it offers you a bookmark-button that you just need to click, that would be low-friction enough for people like me to use it. (I think anything that’s two-click might be too much friction)