[rmelly]

I would love to see a writing format with something like the following structure: 1) A TLDR of Twitter length 2) A paraphrase of the key concepts and point argued in the article 3) The actual full-length article

This way you could ramp up at each stage and decide if it's valuable to keep reading.

[Swizec]

> 1) A TLDR of Twitter length 2) A paraphrase of the key concepts and point argued in the article 3) The actual full-length article

Otherwise known as "real journalism". You know, that thing we collectively decided we don't want to pay for.

You just described the "lead, intro graf, story" structure that newspapers have been using for decades if not centuries.

[mbrock]

Lots of prestigious journalism fails at this, or has different goals. Most magazine articles don't start with a concise thesis statement, instead they try to hook the reader with something like "As I made my way up the stairs in the convention center, a stocky man with pale blonde hair stopped to ask me for directions to the men's room." and keeps going with this kind of enticing pseudo-fictional storytelling.

[TeMPOraL]

> Lots of prestigious journalism fails at this, or has different goals.

The answer is exactly that "or" of yours. Informing the reader in an efficient and useful way is a very distant, low-priority goal, and we're all aware of that and yet still somehow pretend journalism is about informing people. It's not anymore.

[ghaff]

Otherwise known as the specific inverted pyramid style historically used by newspapers specifically for technology reasons--so the story could be more or less cut at any point. Many magazines don't follow this format.

That said, as I've written before, a lot of longer pieces ramble around and take way too long to get to the heart of the matter. And there's certainly nothing wrong with a short paraphrase whether it's literally an abstract or a bit more of a teaser (especially if the main point really does need some build-up).

[peff]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid

I actually agree with your list; I think the inverted pyramid is really about prose construction in an age where print space was at a premium. We can be a lot more free with formatting or redundant information (if it is clearly marked as such) on the web.

I mostly wanted to point out that the concept is not new, but as far as I can tell, it has been pretty much forgotten in most modern web journalism.

[50CNT]

I've been reading some academic papers recently and taking notes in org-mode.

What I find is that a lot of information expressed in solid paragraphs becomes a lot easier to parse once you convert them into an appropriate list, tree or graph structure. A surprising amount of the text I've been reading is lists that have some relation ("x is used in x_1,...","x consists of x_1,..."). This ties in to authors deciding to shake things up by adding unnecessary complexity to these simple lists. This kills the reading comprehension.

For example

    K. Merton developed in the 1940s his nor-
    mative framework for the conduct of sci-
    ence based on universalism, communalism,
    disinterestedness, and organized skepticism

becomes

     K. Merton developed in 1940s a formative framework of scientific conduct based on:  
     - universalism : <definition of universalism> 
     - communalism 
     - disinterest : <note on disinterest> 
     - organized skepticism : <example of organized skepticism>

A nice bonus is that that allows me to annotate specific items in these lists very easily, and visually match up items to notes quickly. (Note how that statement itself is a list due to being joined by an "and").

[mbrock]

I've been thinking similar things. Also, diagrams are underrated.

Maybe "reading" is a low tech invention that we just don't have the patience for anymore. Instead we want to "explore" a theory or network of statements or social graph.

It's pleasant to click around in Wikipedia and get a sense for how different topics relate, but reading the (often turgid and boring) prose seems like work.

[50CNT]

I have to admit, diagrams are a bit harder to do in text, especially interconnected graphs. That said, I could imagine something that uses triples to define a rendered graph, similar to how RDF for the semantic web works. Say

     #BEGIN_GRAPH
     'Paul Graham' founded YC 
     'Sam Altman' leads YC 
     YC funded AirBnB
     YC funded Reddit
     AirBnB <> Accommodation
     #END_GRAPH

Leads to a graph like

      [Paul Graham]----founded----->[YC]------funded----->[AirBnB]<------>[Accommodation]
      [Sam Altman]-----leads------->[  ]            `---->[Reddit]
      

Now that could be prettier, but I am too lazy to copy and paste box drawing characters. With a simplified form like that, all the data is in the form of subject predicate object sentences, which makes for easy parsing. The data could also be fed into a diagram making application like yED for pretty graphical output.

[nextos]

Great idea. With the flexibility of org-mode, you could even turn those notes in spaced repetition flashcards using org-drill.

[theoh]

HN itself could really do with a description of 200 char to go under the link title, serving as a summary and contextualizing the title if it's inadequately informative. Timothy Gowers' Brexit blog post is an example of a non-clickbait title that just was not informative.

[germinalphrase]

Agreed. I often find myself clicking directly through to comments to gauge whether it is worth my time to read the article. An (optional) 200 char. summary would likely increase my willingness to actually take a look at the source article.