I actually struggled to understand what you were talking about until I realised you were conflating an author using “tl;dr” in place of “summary” with a commenter dismissing a post with “tl;dr”.
Then I realised that it’s hardly conflating if they’re the exact same, extremely unlikely combination of letters and punctuation! Whence my strange distinction between a self-tl;dr and an other-tl;dr? I assume from the different usages. I feel like an author is allowed to malign their own work in this way—a kind of British understatement of the quality of their work. Commenters don’t have that allowance.
Er… just to make sure, you do know that ‘TL;DR’ is short for ‘Too Long; Didn’t Read’, right? So a commenter dismissing a post presumably did not, in fact, Read, and is glorifying ver own ignorance; but an author using tl;dr obviously did Read, since ve wrote.
I think it’s the ridiculous implied sarcasm (“I’m so long-winded even I don’t have the patience to listen to myself”) that makes it seem ‘humble’ when self-applied.
Edit: These gender-neutral pronouns are really tripping me up.
I have seen that as “the definition”, but most of the times I have seen TL;DR used, the poster did indeed read the piece; so a better definition may be “TOO LONG; DON’T READ”, as in “don’t waste your time” the post was over-written for what it contains.
Note that I do think using the word “Summary” is better; I posted a rant a few weeks ago against acronyms, especially short ones that you have to stop to think about their meanings.
Well, there’s definitely a variety of meanings—without naming names, I recently read an exchange on LW where ‘tl;dr’ was explicitly used as a synonym for ‘summary’, divorced from either interpretation of the acronym (“I plan on reading that link later, but for now do you have a tl;dr?”).
Edit in response to your edit: Yes, well… I don’t have to stop and think about its meaning, is the thing.
Yes. An author is allowed to dismiss their own post as too long to be worth reading, but a commentor isn’t (unless the piece actually is too long to be worth reading).
I actually struggled to understand what you were talking about until I realised you were conflating an author using “tl;dr” in place of “summary” with a commenter dismissing a post with “tl;dr”.
Then I realised that it’s hardly conflating if they’re the exact same, extremely unlikely combination of letters and punctuation! Whence my strange distinction between a self-tl;dr and an other-tl;dr? I assume from the different usages. I feel like an author is allowed to malign their own work in this way—a kind of British understatement of the quality of their work. Commenters don’t have that allowance.
Er… just to make sure, you do know that ‘TL;DR’ is short for ‘Too Long; Didn’t Read’, right? So a commenter dismissing a post presumably did not, in fact, Read, and is glorifying ver own ignorance; but an author using tl;dr obviously did Read, since ve wrote.
I think it’s the ridiculous implied sarcasm (“I’m so long-winded even I don’t have the patience to listen to myself”) that makes it seem ‘humble’ when self-applied.
Edit: These gender-neutral pronouns are really tripping me up.
I have seen that as “the definition”, but most of the times I have seen TL;DR used, the poster did indeed read the piece; so a better definition may be “TOO LONG; DON’T READ”, as in “don’t waste your time” the post was over-written for what it contains.
Note that I do think using the word “Summary” is better; I posted a rant a few weeks ago against acronyms, especially short ones that you have to stop to think about their meanings.
Well, there’s definitely a variety of meanings—without naming names, I recently read an exchange on LW where ‘tl;dr’ was explicitly used as a synonym for ‘summary’, divorced from either interpretation of the acronym (“I plan on reading that link later, but for now do you have a tl;dr?”).
Edit in response to your edit: Yes, well… I don’t have to stop and think about its meaning, is the thing.
But I get your point.
Yes. An author is allowed to dismiss their own post as too long to be worth reading, but a commentor isn’t (unless the piece actually is too long to be worth reading).