Comment by IncRnd
5 years ago
This is called "burying the lede", where the newsworthy portion is buried somewhere later instead of being mentioned upfront. It's best not to do this, since not all readers will read two thirds of a story in order to determine the subject.
I don't think this is a good example of burying the lede. If I wanted to bury the lede on this post, I'd do this:
> I've spent the last decade working on OT, and have always thought it was the right way to implement a collaborative editor. Then something amazing happened.
Instead, we get this:
> I saw Martin Kleppmann’s talk a few weeks ago about CRDTs, and I felt a deep sense of despair. Maybe all the work I’ve been doing for the past decade won’t be part of the future after all, because Martin’s work on CRDTs will supersede it. Its really good.
That seems like the opposite of burying the lede. The main point of the story is _not_ that CRDT stands for Conflict-free Replicated Data Type, it's that the author now favors CRDTs over OT for collaborative editors.
It's a quibble to say that the undefined term CRDT is part of the lede or the the lede itself, since people who do not know the meaning of the acrynym need to read a significant part of the story to be told the definition.
That can be seen by glancing at the comments on this page.
I disagree that it is a quibble. Not having context is different than being strung along to increase engagement metrics. I didn't know what CRDT was either, but I spent 10-15 seconds searching it and then read the rest of the post, which I thought was otherwise extremely well done. I actually subscribed to Joseph's RSS feed because I was so pleased with the quality of the writing on the blog. I do agree that engaging in this sort of disagreement on HN is low-yield, however.
I've seen this writing tactic become more and more common over the years. It shows disrespect for your audience, and tends to play well only when "preaching to the choir".
Whenever I see this writing style, such that I cannot find a thesis in the first two paragraphs, I almost universally discard the writing as a waste of time.