Are post summaries effective?

PenguinManiac

New member
Joined
Jun 27, 2017
Messages
200
Points
0
Post length is an issue that has been troubling me lately. I've always thought that short to medium posts were the way to go: walls of text drive away readers, because most of them 1) don't have time to read and 2) don't know yet if they'll be interested or not.
However, certain topics do require a descrete level of insight. The only compromise you can reach is to make a post summary (or a TL;DR) to put on front to give potential readers a plausible idea of what the article is going to be about and whether or not they'll be interested.
This solution, though, has a glaring downside: why read the whole article when you have everything summed up in a couple of paragraphs? Even the most interested of readers will take the opportunity to save time, if they feel like they won't be missing out on anything significant.
There are ways around it, but, of course, they all require a significant time investment. The obvious solution is to make your articles interesting, to keep your readers engaged with smart writing, but not everyone has this gift (and, depending on the topic, it's also not always possible). Summaries could also be replaced with images and significant quotes, but, of course, this represents a significant limit.

TL;DR: So, should you make summaries for your articles or could it cause the original texts to be overlooked?
 
Older threads
Replies
6
Views
2,550
Replies
8
Views
2,366
Replies
22
Views
4,713
Replies
2
Views
6,208
Replies
3
Views
5,992
Latest threads
Replies
2
Views
99
Replies
1
Views
182
Replies
5
Views
394
Replies
11
Views
541
Replies
2
Views
233
Similar threads

Latest postsNew threads

Referral contests

Referral link for :

Sponsors

Popular tags

You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.

Top