TLDRs go first or they lose their value

Have you found yourself reading a long blog post or documentation entry just find a "TLDR" section at the end?

I know I did.

TLDR stands for "Too Long, Didn't Read" and serves as a way to provide a brief summary of what the bigger content is about.

The point of having such a thing in your content is to say something along the lines of:

"hey, this post is long, if you're not interested in reading the whole thing, this is a summary".

However, if you're placing this at the end, you're almost forcing me to read your content before getting what I came here for: the answer to whatever question I had for which you might provide the answer.

Even if I search for the term "tldr" or quickly scroll past your long content, I still have to remember that your article might have this summary section and actually look for it.

While this is a low effort activity, I still find it to be an unnecessary cognitive load which we could benefit from spending it on anything else.

I'm not going to link samples of this here because there's just so many and I do not wish to call out anyone in particular. I don't think people do this intentionally. I think it's just something people do without thinking too hard on what impact it can have.

I'm writing this because I noticed it being done many times and found myself wondering "why is this at the end? I could have been done with this article 15 minutes ago".

Naturally, I now search for "TLDR" whenever I find myself looking at longer content just because I'm trying to learn my lesson.

Have you had a similar experience?

Did I misunderstand TLDRs altogether?

What's your thoughts?

There's no commenting section here. I could add one but I probably won't. If you'd like to share your thoughts on this, you can reach me at thoughts@ungu.info

P.S. This is the first time I'm sharing a thought I had for a while. I've had many along the years. Some changed as my understanding of things changed. This one stuck with me so I'm sharing it with you.

Thanks for reading!