Analyzing Jeff Atwood’s “Because Reading is Fundamental”

Writer Jeff Atwood discusses the importance of reading, which he defines as a form of listening when online. A writer with a coding background, Atwood starts off by saying that the post count number, programmed to increase the more you post, can be misleading. He uses the quantity over quality concept to argue that a higher post count does not necessarily mean a more valuable discussion.

Atwood states that a discussion, as opposed to a chat room, consists of people who have spent more time reading, and less time posting. The post number is simply a record of your failure to communicate.

Atwood’s audience is likely 18-50 years old, or anyone whose job or interests are focused on the internet. Someone who reads this article must be aware of basic internet functions as he refers to concepts like “chat room” vs. “discussion.”

He supports his argument with two forms of research. The Ars Banana Experiment embedded a sentence in the article instructing commenters to display the word “banana” in their comment. This helped to determine if and how many commenters were reading the entire article. It wasn’t until comment ninety-three that “banana” was mentioned. The Slate Experiment had a data scientist from the firm ‘Chartbeat’ collect data to determine how much content was viewed when scrolling through an article. It was found that most visitors read only 50% of the content.

Atwood comes up with some solutions to encourage viewers to read through an article start to finish. The first is to remove interruptions to reading, specifically pagination where the next page loads automatically. Next, he says by measuring read times, more or less value can be given to the registered user depending on how much time he or she spent in the browser. He gives another way to encourage reading, which is by simply giving rewards for reading. And finally, having the conversation update in real time—the closest thing to having a live, in-person discussion—will encourage a more dynamic experience.

He makes a strong point on the problem of uninformed discussions from a simple lack of reading. I agree with his discussion on why this is a problem and how the internet needs to set itself up to support a better online community. His professional background as a coder helps him to develop effective strategies that can be implemented. However, I would be interested in hearing what those working in other professions who use the internet would have to say on this topic. For example, online marketing is massive on the internet, and would support an opposite, quantity over quality system. For many online discussions, the goals may not value the quality of the conversation, but the amount of people that appear to be involved.