Blogger Jeff Attwood argues that people should read more, and write less online. People are quick
to respond, or comment online without reading first, and fail to listen. Attwood wants to prove that
the value of a conversation has more to do with listening, than it has to do with talking.
Jeff wants to encourage an audience of both young, and mature adults, to read articles in their
entirety. He explains his information in simple terms that would be easy to understand for anyone
with a high school education. He offers research that supports his argument, and helps his audience
to understand the point he wants to make with more context. He suggests that we need to incentivize
listening, or make it worthwhile to read. He also suggests we encourage reading by removing
interruptions from reading, measuring and displaying read times, updating conversations in real time,
or offering rewards for reading. Attwood explains this will force people to read more, and it will
improve discourse.
The first experiment he uses as an example to prove that people comment, or respond before
reading an entire article more often than not. The Ars Banana Experiment was conducted in 2011.
They posted an article with the title “Guns at home more likely to be used stupidly than in self
defense”. In the seventh paragraph of the article they wrote “If you have read this far, please mention
Bananas in your comment below. We're pretty sure 90% of the respondents to this story won't even
read it first.” In result, there were ninety-two comments before someone who had read the whole
article commented with the word banana. Attwood also offers The Slate Experiment that shows
analytics data based on real usage. The data shows that most users only read about fifty percent of
the content. Both experiments offer the conclusion that people do not typically read all of the
content. Attwood explains there is far too much talking, and we need to incentivize listening.
I agree with Attwood’s solution that if we read more, it will improve discourse. The quality of
conversation online will improve if we take more time to listen. It is reasonable to assume we could
incentivize listening by removing interruptions from reading, displaying read times, and updating
conversations in real time. Although, I do believe that offering rewards that would be invaluable to
many may not be as effective as his other suggestions.
