Which way of representing multi-paragraph text in social platforms is better: a single unified article, or a thread of connected notes?
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@evan depends? Sometimes threads work, especially if you're writing it as you post. But if you're writing long-form articles that you want to publish all in one go, and you have a website or somewhere to host them, I really think the best thing is to post the long thing on your website and then make a single, short post on social media linking to it
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@evan I voted usually article. But I also wanted to point out that posting long-ass articles directly to short-form social media as one single giant post is also annoying. You asked a question--did you not want people explaining the reasoning behind their answer?
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@evan I voted usually article. But I also wanted to point out that posting long-ass articles directly to short-form social media as one single giant post is also annoying. You asked a question--did you not want people explaining the reasoning behind their answer?
@sofiav not at all! That's my favourite part. "It depends" is usually paired with "this question is unanswerable". I try to help people get to answer with that FAQ. I am glad you got there by yourself!
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@evan @RonJeffries I wonder how answers differ between *writers* of such articles and *readers*.
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I like an article better.
But, one of I like about a thread is that you have separate URLs for different parts of it. (Could do that with an article, too.)
A big thing for me though — I want to read the article in app. I don't want to be sent somewhere else to read it.
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@evan in social platforms specifically, it's usually threads because even if it's the same amount of text it's broken into bite-sized chunks that aren't overwhelming compared to the other, usually much shorter, posts it's "competing" with
Different story if it's explicitly a longform-oriented social platform or something that'd show up in your RSS reader
Interesting aside: we used to chunk up our articles at Snipette, using a pair of scissors as a separator!
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I like an article better.
But, one of I like about a thread is that you have separate URLs for different parts of it. (Could do that with an article, too.)
A big thing for me though — I want to read the article in app. I don't want to be sent somewhere else to read it.
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(1/2) @evan I am one of the few who voted "Always thread", but the reasons are personal.
I'm a reasonably good writer, but I struggle with concision: “Why use 100 words when 500 would do?” ⇐ or so I too often think.
I enjoy that canonical Mastodon instances impose the 500 character limit.
Indeed, I thank you personally that I made my best progress on more concision in my writing *in my whole life* during those identi.ca/status.net halcyon days.
But, 250 char limit was too short. 500 is ideal.… -
(1/2) @evan I am one of the few who voted "Always thread", but the reasons are personal.
I'm a reasonably good writer, but I struggle with concision: “Why use 100 words when 500 would do?” ⇐ or so I too often think.
I enjoy that canonical Mastodon instances impose the 500 character limit.
Indeed, I thank you personally that I made my best progress on more concision in my writing *in my whole life* during those identi.ca/status.net halcyon days.
But, 250 char limit was too short. 500 is ideal.…(2/2) @evan …I also voted “Always thread” b/c the canonical 500 character limit (found on most #Mastodon instances on the #Fediverse) is the ideal length to express a single idea in English.
Long format writing belongs on blogs where you can synthesize multiple ideas into a single thesis.
On these platforms, each idea should be discretely contained in one post — as I did in these 2 posts just now.
Also, those who want to boost/favorite can only boost/favorite only the single ideas they like.
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@evan I am very split between the two and just slightly leaning toward article, so usually article. What I like about the thread format is the possibility to comment and discuss parts of a longer arguments. I also find it interesting how writing in threads tends to force a more concise way of communicating where each post/stanza can stand on its own.
