TL;DR

One thing that I become increasingly prevalent in online communities is the use of the TL;DR. On Fakku, I haven't seen it used much, but almost any other social network uses the TL;DR at the end of any word block longer than a paragraph. In some situations I believe it is acceptable, but some readers feel that the lack of a TL;DR means that the story itself isn't worth the read. More times than not, its the elaborate details that make the idea important, and a quick summary won't help you understand the morale the writer is trying to bring across.

I'm curious on how others feel about people using TL;DR. I find that incorporating a TL;DR into a post is promoting individuals to lazy thinking. Why should they read a story and think for themselves when they can have your thoughts slammed down at them in a single sentence? People even read TL;DR after they read the post so they don't have to think critically about what they just read. The comments I have come across on the internet that have impacted me the most are generally three paragraphs or more, but they always include a TL;DR. I look at their summary and think about the heart-touching or sadness portrayal of placing me in their shoes and the summary is just dry filter of what the end results. It makes me weep that the deepest comments of all are so simply ignored, and we provide an outlet for them to ignore. If you want information to be important, I believe you should not include a summary just to provoke your audience to read it.

TL;DR: I...wha...Just read it.

In most cases, I hate the use of TL;DR. If your post can be summarized without comprimising the main point, then a TL;DR tag at the end is fine. However, if some post "TL;DR" as a response to a long post, I think it is just demeaning and discourages deep thinking and conversation.

[font=Verdana][color=green]TL;DR is the most pisstakey acronym ever. It's disrespectful and kills conversations. More often or not, people will simply quote the first person to type it, and simply add "This".

It is never acceptable; especially in the "Serious Discussion" sub-forum. How can you possible engage with each other when you don't bother to read the posts? Despicable.

Btw, you do know what sarcastic remark you're going to receive?

>People upset that tl;dr is used in a demeaning or disrespectful fashion

That's sort of, you know, the basis of its entire etymology.

If I have no intention of reading or contributing to the discussion, I simply close the tab that the thread is in. In my opinion, to type in Teal Deer is to type a direct insult to the person who took time out of their lives to share their thoughts with you and the world. If you don't want to read what the person is saying, then there are others who will. And as you have said: Typing teal deer discourages other people from doing so. It is effectively a WMD of threads, as it can cause an incredible loss of interest in other users who read the teal deer, which leads to the thread being dead on the water.

Yeah. tl;dr was designed entirely to insult people who make long, uninteresting posts. People who use it to summarize their posts probably shouldn't be posting because they are making long, uninteresting posts.

If you can actually make a tldr version that's accurate at the end of your post you should probably delete all text above the tldr.

THIS ^^

OP you have to understand that writing long winded posts bore people who read them.
Not to mention the mass of usually badly formatted text puts off people from reading the post in its entirety.
If a post is well written and well formatted I'll take the time to read, otherwise tl;dr.

Tl;dr can also be compared to the real life Executive Summary because an exec won't have time to read your 50+ pages of a report or plan. Instead they want the essentials before they'll even take the time to read.



Tbh I think people should quit being so precious. They're telling you that your post is long and boring. Learn from it and write a better more concise post next time.