Seconded. As a time-saving measure, I skip any comments longer than three paragraphs unless the first couple of sentences makes their importance very clear. Unfortunately, that means I miss most of Evan’s posts. :(
Would it help if I included a summary of my posts at the top of them?
Often I write for a specific audience, which is more limited and exclusive. I don’t think there is anything necessarily wrong with taking this approach to discourse in EA. Top-level posts on the EA Forum are made specific to a single cause, written in an academic style for a niche audience. I’ve mentally generalized this to how I write about anything on the internet.
It turns out not writing in a more inclusive way is harming the impact of my messages more than I thought. I’ll make more effort to change this. Thanks for the feedback.
FYI, I a) struggle to read most of your posts (and seem like I’m supposed to be in the target audience)
b) the technique I myself use is “write the post the way I’d naturally write it (i.e. long and meandering), and then write a tldr of the post summarizing it with a few bullet points… and then realize that the tldr was all I actually needed to say in the first place.
Seconded. As a time-saving measure, I skip any comments longer than three paragraphs unless the first couple of sentences makes their importance very clear. Unfortunately, that means I miss most of Evan’s posts. :(
Would it help if I included a summary of my posts at the top of them?
Often I write for a specific audience, which is more limited and exclusive. I don’t think there is anything necessarily wrong with taking this approach to discourse in EA. Top-level posts on the EA Forum are made specific to a single cause, written in an academic style for a niche audience. I’ve mentally generalized this to how I write about anything on the internet.
It turns out not writing in a more inclusive way is harming the impact of my messages more than I thought. I’ll make more effort to change this. Thanks for the feedback.
FYI, I a) struggle to read most of your posts (and seem like I’m supposed to be in the target audience)
b) the technique I myself use is “write the post the way I’d naturally write it (i.e. long and meandering), and then write a tldr of the post summarizing it with a few bullet points… and then realize that the tldr was all I actually needed to say in the first place.
Yes, an early summary would help. It doesn’t have to be very formal; just a clear statement of your argument in the first paragraph.
If you’re going to argue multiple things, you could use different comments.