Show HN: Save reading time with the TL;DR PLZ bookmarklet

kenneth · on Aug 21, 2011

People need to stop reading so much crap and so many summaries, and learn to focus on reading a long article for 20min.

doublesprout · on Aug 21, 2011

Summaries are not necessarily crap and people need some way to tell if what they're going to read is worth their time.

In reality, all this script does is make it easier for people to filter for what they want to read.

leon_ · on Aug 21, 2011

Well, if it's interesting I have no problem with sitting down and read something for 20 minutes.

A tl;dr is nice to get an overview if it could be potentially of interest to me. I have no real desire to end up reading some SEO/internet marketing nonsense only because someone chose a sensational headline.

That's too the reason why I don't click on youtube video links I get from friends. The URLs are pretty much non-descriptive and the chance of ending up watching some 15year old trying to be japanese are too big. That and the long loading time of YT.

beaumartinez · on Aug 21, 2011

Have a look at tldr.it[1]. It fetches data from Delicious to TL;DR.

[1] http://tldr.it

metachris · on Aug 21, 2011

Didn't load for me - the bookmarklet is stuck on "Getting data from Delicious".

jannes · on Aug 21, 2011

This is really nice. I had a similar idea, but haven't felt ready to implement it yet.

I think users would appreciate it if they could keep track of what they have read and summarized. Like an archive for every article they have read. It would let users take a look into their past and let them see what kind of texts they were reading a long time ago. It would help users to remember things that they have long forgotten. Also, humans tend to like collecting and gathering.

One little thing: Why did you (or your friend) name it "TLDRplz"? Please remind yourself what TL;DR means. It's a statement, not a noun that's synonymous to "summary". I think it's annoying to see it used that way.

_csoz · on Aug 21, 2011

Thanks for your remarks. If this ever gets traction, that would be a great next step.

I don't like the name either because it's atrocious grammatically and unpronounceable but, i often encounter blogs and comments that end in "tl;dr: this and that" (that's actually where the idea came from). I think it's pretty self-explanatory to the reddit / blogging crowd.

P.S. I dont know who added the "tl;dr" for the current page, but it made me giggle, thanks.

barapa · on Aug 21, 2011

This is a great concept...of course, it needs many users to be effective. A couple suggestions (that you probably are already thinking about):

1 - You need a distinctive favicon, because it is so important

2 - When you submit a summary, it should show you the summaries, rather than just give you a new Captcha...it makes you think you got the captcha wrong, even though you write somewhere that it was a success. I think we've been too conditioned to think seeing the captcha change means success.

_csoz · on Aug 21, 2011

- Unfortunately you can't set a favicon to a javascript: bookmark

- We need to show the form again because it's the only chance to make corrections to the summary. The obvious solution is to remove the second captcha. Will do ASAP, thanks

radog · on Aug 21, 2011

Why not also have an automated script for the vast majority of sites for which people don't upload their own summaries? First two paragraphs and last paragraph seem like they would do the trick 80-90% of the time.

_csoz · on Aug 21, 2011

link: http://tldrplz.com

leon_ · on Aug 21, 2011

Oh, that's really neat. I can see myself using this. I hope it gets more popular :)

srkgupta · on Aug 21, 2011

This is really awesome... I too wanted to create a site like this... something huge like disqus... but u made it very simple and its indeed nice...