One Click Over the Line

Our guest petitioner is Oliver Willis.

Why This Is Important

I would like to read your articles without clicking “next” and you can make just as much money from a well designed single-page article as one begging for more page views. Electrons cost you nothing. We want to read without hitting NEXT. I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO PAGINATE ANYMORE.

Everybody Publishing On The Internet: STOP UNNECESSARILY PAGINATING ARTICLES [Change.org]
12 Comments

Is this really a thing? Did someone spend time writing that?

Wait, people still click through those? I’ve gotten so spoiled with Safari’s “Reader” button…

Greetings from Shuhh-MOW-kin Dam, next to Sellers’-ville Selinsgrove (no idea how to pronounce it, but there are lots of peep shows and churches around there), across the river from SUN-burr-ee which is down the mountain from Pax-I-niss.

The Econolodge is packed. I’m not sure if there’s a wedding, high school sport event, or NASCAR thing. Probably a public lynching.

The minority population in this county doubled when I arrived, and if I’m lucky, it will be zeeeroh when I leave tomorrow.

@mellbell: This is a small world.

It drives me crazy when there isn’t a “next” on a long blog post. What’s the rule, Nojo, two paragraphs and one picture, and then you go to the jump? That’s what a web designer told me once when “training” me how to use WordPress to manage a website. She was impressed by how quickly I seemed to pick it up – I didn’t tell her how I got my practice.

@Lost in the Negative Space: Good luck tomorrow.

@SanFranLefty: Thanks, Lefty. I need it.

Back to the post, I think this is a satirical petition. I’ve been trying to think of starting a petition more than precisely two people might give a whit about, because pro or con, it’s all about caring and not indifference.

@al2o3cr: People still use Safari? ;-P (Yeah, I bet you have an iPad, and I’m just green.)

@SanFranLefty: How or whether you do jumps is a matter of taste and judgment. Some blogs run full posts, leaving you to click inside only if you care to comment; others do newfangled “more” links that present more text in the column you’re already reading.

My own rule is to jump inside as quick as possible, and my own writing has evolved to create natural break points after an intro. But that also depends on whether the post is long enough to merit jumping, and whether the “natural” intro runs longer than usual.

So, really, it all depends. If I were setting up a different kind of website, I might have a different approach.

Simple: click “more” on the latest post, then navigate to the next by clicking at the top to the next post all on one page, including comments.

Sorry, you will have to do your own scrolling.

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