Stop Explaining What Things Are
Postedabout 2 months agoActiveabout 2 months ago
kevquirk.comTechstory
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The article argues that explanatory content can be unnecessary and frustrating when searching for quick answers online, sparking a debate among commenters about the value of context and conciseness in online content.
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- 01Story posted
Nov 5, 2025 at 11:12 AM EST
about 2 months ago
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Nov 5, 2025 at 6:25 PM EST
7h after posting
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Nov 7, 2025 at 4:00 AM EST
about 2 months ago
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ID: 45824567Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 1:08:48 PM
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Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
Bonus: only one place to update when you realize you have explained it wrong.
The first result [0] pretty much immediately drops into what commands to run. If that result is part of the problem, I fully disagree it is a problem.
[0]: https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-...
My go-to example for this is when I once searched for egg substitutes for a baking recipe. Lots of multi-paragraph results about how eggs are nutritious, why eggs are useful in baking, why you might want to substitute them out. Finally after many more paragraphs of non-answers and many ignored ads: my answer, but not in a brief list, a paragraph for each one further explaining what they are.
I go to an LLM for these sorts of questions now and ask it to be brief. The internet for basic questions of any sort lead to these same frustrating webpages otherwise.
> You *Google* “how to fix a Git conflict”, and every result ... is ... *"SEO-stuffed* filler drowning ... the answer.
Mate, you've searched something using Google, and the results you're looking at have been optimized to appear at the top of Google search results. So why are you surprised by this?
Your quibble, if it's with anyone, is with Google and why they value this kind of content (why filling the page with valueless drivel makes it more likely to appear in search results).
That’s just… I don’t know what to feel about that. I’d rather keep the websites we visit for humans first, LLMs second. Not the other way around.
TLA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-letter_acronym
A secondary contributing cause is that many people aren't very good at structuring explanations. For example, the old rule of thumb that you usually won't miss anything important if you skip the first third of most YouTube how-to videos existed before the algorithm disfavored very short videos (and post-TikTok that's all changed too).