Re:Stack, Heap, Pool
by ska on Monday September 14, 2015 @12:49PM
(#10216003)
Am I the only one who believes "TL;DR" adds negative value here (in general, not just your contribution) ?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
You are almost certainly not the only one, but I can't say I agree with you. In an age where we're bombarded by information and it is a struggle (if even possible) to stay current on technology trends, TL;DR's give a summary allowing you to make a more informed decision on whether an article is worth your time - titles just aren't usually sufficient to determine that.
If you just blindly read the TL;DR's, though, you're ceding judgement of the merits of the article to whoever wrote the TL;DR.
In this case, the TL;DR parrots the (false) conclusion from the article, so if you stopped here, you now have false facts in your brain.
As I have said, this is a problem with specific TL;DRs not the general concept of them. (It is still a relevant concern, but it isn't sufficient reason to disregard them completely.)
Also, I generally use TL;DRs to decide WHAT to read, I don't use them as my source of information. So I would have disregarded the TL;DRs incorrect conclusion and read the article for myself (which I did).
The problem is that often the TL;DR is shorter than the article, but also incorrectly represents it or is sometimes just plain wrong. Following this leads you to an misinformed decision, not an informed one.
That is a problem with specific TL;DR's, not the concept itself.
True, but in my experience that overwhelming majority.