this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Technology
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How I hate those "new" web pages spending 8 pages on fluff before even explaining how it works.
Thank you Google algorithm (it detects how long time you spend on a page after a search).
So after scrolling up, down left and right, I didn't find it (guess it's sound?).
Long-form journalism predates google by a few centuries.
Out of the 15 paragraphs, it says it uses sound in the 3rd and explains the mechanism in the 4th.
I agree that they should've put it in the title or the lead, but this wasn't a news pice, it's a monthly column focused on analog buttons. The first 2 paragraphs rightfully contextualise the hardware to an era most of us don't know much.
I was quite used to sift through paragraphs, chapters or even books to learn. I might be wrong but (lot of) web pages have uniformally adepted this way of presenting any kind of information because (again I might be wrong) search algorithms thinks you found what you searched for when you stop searching (for at least a minute or maybe 10, I don't know the exact details).
So adding the history of whatever you're searching for, maybe mudding the waters a bit and stuff some uninteresting piece at the end will keep you there. I think it's called enshittifycation when it happens to a website, but maybe its the same for search engines.
I'm seriously questioning if you're a bot because you're throwing keywords and expressions you do not understand.
You're complaining of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) articles. This is clearly not that.
Those pages ask the same question multiple times even in organic forms of how you randomly type it into a search engine. Just close any site that starts wit something like: "Don't you hate it when your remote doesn't work? If you press the button on your clicker and nothing happens, you need to open it and repair the buttons. If you need to fix your remote, start off by checking the batteries..."
Journalism should not be "here's all the info in one paragraph" and be gone. However, a good lead should reply to 5 questions: What? Who? How? Where? When?
But this is not a news piece, this is a fluff column about old tech. You can just hit Wikipedia for easy-to-read digested info (I do that frequently).
For all the shit ways journalism has gone to, and the ocasional misteps The Verge has done (their pc building tutorial, go watch it for a giggle) this actually a cool column.
Last I read they are also sticking it to Spez by continuing to report on the shit Reddit has been doing.