[modifier]

articles which begin with a long section of blithering about the author's background, family, or cats.

It's part formula, part filler to meet word count. My eye immediately skips down a few paragraphs so I can get to the point.

[LanceH]

My eye moves on to another article. It's particularly frustrating on this site where informative titles for the links are considered editorial and get swapped back to the typical link-bait title.