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Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

longform.org

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Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#81

Post by dang »

DamnInteresting wrote: post #78

I think people tend to underestimate the effort involved in curating content. Reading and assessing all of that stuff is time consuming. And there are a lot of complainers and axe-grinders out there who harass you when your curation does not exactly match their interests and values. People assume you linked to a thing because you 100% agree with it. People respond flippantly to the titles without reading the articles…

Thanks for the great articles, and I hope no poaching of them ends up here. We do switch URLs and ban sites when we see that kind of thing, but we don't always catch it.

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#82

Post by jethro_tell »

phgn wrote: post #35
probably_wrong wrote: post #32

I am sorry to see them go, but more for the principle than for the site itself. I gave up on the site when I realized that I was spending more time scrolling for something interesting than actually reading articles. Even now, out of their top 10 "best of 2021" I find only 3 of those even remotely interesting, and IMHO one of them is garbage (I read it when it came out). The type of articles I like the most are those…

Your point applies to much more than long-form articles. We spend so much time subscribing and scrolling through information sources just to be "aware" things exist (it's the worst for news). If we'd really want to read something great or understand a topic deeply, everyone has huge read-it-later lists and bookmark collections. But filtering and discovering new things is somehow much more rewarding than reading or un…

Much of my leasure time is spent working with my hands when I'd rather be reading thinking and learning. I burn through audio books at a good clip but I still haven't found a good way to get random articles read to me. And in the mean time, they stack up for true pleasure time which is rare for me.

When I get a chance, I might make myself a pocket to Amazon Polly pipeline or something. The difficulty is that to make this a commercial product would almost certainly be a copyright violation and not ethical to the actual writers anyway.

I'd love to do the same for a lot of my email but I don't know if I want to upload that and I'd have to do quite a bit of parsing to get the meat and skip the re: re: re: re: so that's out there a bit.

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#83

Post by fishtoaster »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #54
probably_wrong wrote: post #32

I am sorry to see them go, but more for the principle than for the site itself. I gave up on the site when I realized that I was spending more time scrolling for something interesting than actually reading articles. Even now, out of their top 10 "best of 2021" I find only 3 of those even remotely interesting, and IMHO one of them is garbage (I read it when it came out). The type of articles I like the most are those…

When I was seven years old, I had an uncle with a grey beard and an eye-patch that would take me out on walks and tell long stories about his history as a sailor in the merchant marines. He had been at sea for fourteen years and visited just about every country, even the landlocked ones he would say with his signature smoker's laugh. Uncle Robert tapped his pipe on the heel of his boot as we stopped. Not that his tal…

This is my pet peeve on long-form writing. I'll get all excited about, eg, a 20-page article on a new discovery about black holes, but then bounce pretty quickly when the first 9 paragraphs are meaningless descriptive details about the reporter's first visit with the scientist who made the discovery. I realize the need to add human interest throughout a long read, but I get annoyed when it turns out it's just a 2-page article's worth of content spread out over 20 pages.

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#84

Post by gibolt »

probably_wrong wrote: post #32

I am sorry to see them go, but more for the principle than for the site itself. I gave up on the site when I realized that I was spending more time scrolling for something interesting than actually reading articles. Even now, out of their top 10 "best of 2021" I find only 3 of those even remotely interesting, and IMHO one of them is garbage (I read it when it came out). The type of articles I like the most are those…

I think you will thoroughly enjoy Adam Savage's (of Mythbusters fame) recent video on measurement.

https://youtu.be/qE7dYhpI_bI

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#85

Post by DamnInteresting »

dang wrote: post #81
DamnInteresting wrote: post #78

I think people tend to underestimate the effort involved in curating content. Reading and assessing all of that stuff is time consuming. And there are a lot of complainers and axe-grinders out there who harass you when your curation does not exactly match their interests and values. People assume you linked to a thing because you 100% agree with it. People respond flippantly to the titles without reading the articles…

Thanks for the great articles, and I hope no poaching of them ends up here. We do switch URLs and ban sites when we see that kind of thing, but we don't always catch it.

Thanks for the kind words!

I wouldn't consider it poaching for content I curate to appear here; to the contrary, I sometimes share relevant links on HN myself. I am mostly put off by sites that claim to be hand curated by a few people, and then a significant fraction of their links are clearly based on my efforts. I don't want to name names, but there was a very popular curated site/newsletter that was leaning heavily on my work for a few years. Fortunately someone there seems to have realized it was uncool, and they backed off.

Edit: To be clear, here I am discussing my site's curation of third-party links. We also create our own content, but I don't share those articles on HN myself, I would consider that gross.

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#86

Post by slavinrose »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #54
probably_wrong wrote: post #32

I am sorry to see them go, but more for the principle than for the site itself. I gave up on the site when I realized that I was spending more time scrolling for something interesting than actually reading articles. Even now, out of their top 10 "best of 2021" I find only 3 of those even remotely interesting, and IMHO one of them is garbage (I read it when it came out). The type of articles I like the most are those…

When I was seven years old, I had an uncle with a grey beard and an eye-patch that would take me out on walks and tell long stories about his history as a sailor in the merchant marines. He had been at sea for fourteen years and visited just about every country, even the landlocked ones he would say with his signature smoker's laugh. Uncle Robert tapped his pipe on the heel of his boot as we stopped. Not that his tal…

Love your sense of humor and great writing.

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#87

Post by jseliger »

optimalsolver wrote: post #7

Alternatives: Arts & Letters Daily : https://aldaily.com/ Aeon: https://aeon.co/ Nautilus: https://nautil.us/ Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/

http://marginalrevolution.com/

I used to write more essays but now often post links to http://jakeseliger.com

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#88

Post by spchampion2 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #54
probably_wrong wrote: post #32

I am sorry to see them go, but more for the principle than for the site itself. I gave up on the site when I realized that I was spending more time scrolling for something interesting than actually reading articles. Even now, out of their top 10 "best of 2021" I find only 3 of those even remotely interesting, and IMHO one of them is garbage (I read it when it came out). The type of articles I like the most are those…

When I was seven years old, I had an uncle with a grey beard and an eye-patch that would take me out on walks and tell long stories about his history as a sailor in the merchant marines. He had been at sea for fourteen years and visited just about every country, even the landlocked ones he would say with his signature smoker's laugh. Uncle Robert tapped his pipe on the heel of his boot as we stopped. Not that his tal…

Longform - where we bury the lede and you get to find it, for fun!

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#89

Post by pitched »

padobson wrote: post #74
marginalia_nu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was seven years old, I had an uncle with a grey beard and an eye-patch that would take me out on walks and tell long stories about his history as a sailor in the merchant marines. He had been at sea for fourteen years and visited just about every country, even the landlocked ones he would say with his signature smoker's laugh. Uncle Robert tapped his pipe on the heel of his boot as we stopped. Not that his tal…

and time is not something that is afforded journalists and writers today. This seems intuitive, and also provably false. Joe Rogan is currently running the most famous and successful podcast in the world, and those conversations routinely go over three hours. Dan Carlin is on a lower tier, but still highly successful, and his podcasts are far more polished and produced and integrate huge amounts of research, and the…

When I want all the details, I look for a full book. When I want the summary, I check Wikipedia. Articles are somewhere between. Either something is too new or obscure/niche or not quite worth the time investment of a book.

So I think you’re right but it isn’t the medium that’s dead. More like, it takes up a weird spot on the ROI curve to read through that’s rarely worth the time.

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#90

Post by allenu »

fishtoaster wrote: post #83
marginalia_nu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was seven years old, I had an uncle with a grey beard and an eye-patch that would take me out on walks and tell long stories about his history as a sailor in the merchant marines. He had been at sea for fourteen years and visited just about every country, even the landlocked ones he would say with his signature smoker's laugh. Uncle Robert tapped his pipe on the heel of his boot as we stopped. Not that his tal…

This is my pet peeve on long-form writing. I'll get all excited about, eg, a 20-page article on a new discovery about black holes, but then bounce pretty quickly when the first 9 paragraphs are meaningless descriptive details about the reporter's first visit with the scientist who made the discovery. I realize the need to add human interest throughout a long read, but I get annoyed when it turns out it's just a 2-pag…

This is very similar to documentary series today on streaming services. There's not a whole lot of story to fill 4-5 episodes, but they need to pad it, so they have meandering narratives and asides that don't really add to the overall story but give the viewer just enough "hooks" to keep going.

In some ways, this is not too dissimilar to articles on the web where articles that could be very short are padded out with extra paragraphs to help with SEO, though in this case the "searcher" is the reader looking for long, meaty articles.

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