Analyzing a Blog

Stop Talking!

Ostrom

January 15, 2020

In the article “Because Reading is Fundamental,” Jeff Atwood argues the need for reading to encourage the necessities of listening. The article aims to focus on an audience of men and women between the ages of 30-55 with post-education, with moderate to high paying jobs, because of the two studies and the grammar used in the article. However, the focus of the article can easily be understood to promote the benefits of reading to all educational and occupational levels. It is also for those who are posting without reading the full article. It is about validating those lurkers who read in silence.

The article drew me in because of its title. It had an answer, but what was the question? The only way for me to learn was to read the article in its entirety. It was direct and to the point from the very beginning to the very end. It wasn’t just about reading the article but about being critical and asking questions of the viewer.

Jeff Atwood's thesis is too much talking/writing and not enough listening/reading. He sees the need of some people to post comments even before reaching the end of a post as being negative. It is a theory that is supported by two types of research in the article.

The first comprising of the "Ars Banana" experiment, where users reading the article Guns at home more likely to be used stupidly than in self-defence, were asked to make a “banana” comment when they reached the seventh paragraph on the eleventh page.  It took until the 93rd post on the third page of comments someone commented “bananas”. Emphasizing how articles are not read for its content, but its click-bait title.

The Slate experiment challenges us to read the article to the end, however, at the same time telling us that we won’t finish 50% of the article because of someone commenting. This theory points out that incentivize talking is a problem and that there needs to be more incentivize listening instead. Which makes the fact that analytics need to stop penalizing the lurkers and make them just as important as any post counts.

Atwood suggests making the reading of online articles easier for the user is to do it in the following four ways.

1.                  Remove interruptions such as paginating. 

2.                  Measure read times and display them.

3.                  Give rewards for reading.

4.                  Update in real-time. 

Reading is fundamental and without it, conversations will have no critical discourse and become disconnected words without meaning. The influence of fake news and the armchair expert who makes assumptions from what he/she sees on the internet is why reading and listening are essential. Perhaps by making reading and listening more attractive, the misinterpretations and inaccuracies posts will become less and less a problem.