I agree that the authors have a responsibility to communicate clearly. I also think readers have an obligation to read charitably, simply because the author can’t anticipate all possible audiences and interpretations. The question really is how large is the relative effort each is expected to take. And here, I’d argue, the fundamental asymmetry between writers and readers informs an answer: A single person writes, but an article is read by many, many more people (a known mantra from coding for code quality). Whether people think about it in this terms or not, processes tend to take this into account. Large newspapers used to have almost paranoid quality control to avoid even small inconveniences on readers.
Question to the moderators: How often is a LW post with karma 10, 50, 100, 200 typically read?
I agree that the authors have a responsibility to communicate clearly. I also think readers have an obligation to read charitably, simply because the author can’t anticipate all possible audiences and interpretations. The question really is how large is the relative effort each is expected to take. And here, I’d argue, the fundamental asymmetry between writers and readers informs an answer: A single person writes, but an article is read by many, many more people (a known mantra from coding for code quality). Whether people think about it in this terms or not, processes tend to take this into account. Large newspapers used to have almost paranoid quality control to avoid even small inconveniences on readers.
Question to the moderators: How often is a LW post with karma 10, 50, 100, 200 typically read?
See the sources for “Code is written once but read many times.”