Show HN: Because most of us suffer from AD(H)D, here is too-long-didnt-read.com | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Because most of us suffer from AD(H)D, here is too-long-didnt-read.com

Hey HN crowd!

Two days ago I realized I'm almost unable to read a book or a long article without getting distracted by Twitter/HN/Reddit/Work. The situation is so terrible, I'm even getting afraid of big articles, and my ReadItLater list is getting pretty long (shameful I know) ... and I'm pretty sure most of you are in this situation :)

Being used to TL;DRs on long reddit posts, I thought it would be great to have these for everything, so I quickly hacked this website:

http://www.too-long-didnt-read.com/

Here is an example of TL;DR: http://www.too-long-didnt-read.com/5tropy

I would love to have your feedback on it, how to improve it, etc.

Thank you a bunch!

(Some info for nerds: Rails 2.3.8, ~150 LOC, Twitter oAuth is used for posting.)

EDIT: Obviously, most of us don't really suffer from ADHD, but I was limited on the characters in the title :)

View on HN

I visited - didn't know what to do.

Definitely need to show a listing of submissions and summaries. As per the example you provided, looks great. Would love to use a service like this.

Categorize/tag them so I can browse startup-related articles (or whatever category I want)

Auto-fill url's as people are typing.

If the story I'm interested in has already been summarized, take me to it.

Just a few of my ideas. Could definitely build a mini-newspaper/ezine type of thing around this.

Good job! Keep the iterations coming.

EDIT: Don't force me to use my twitter account to do a submission - please!

A browser addon would also be awesome!

Thanks for your comments!

"I visited - didn't know what to do." True, the only place it is really explained is here on HN, I'll fix that quickly. [edit: fixed]

"Categorize/tag them so I can browse startup-related articles (or whatever category I want)" I don't want it to become this "big", I just want to have a bookmarklet when I'm reading a good Paul Graham's article, and check if someone did a TL;DR for it already. One click.

"Auto-fill url's as people are typing." Auto-fill with what?

"If the story I'm interested in has already been summarized, take me to it." The bookmarklet does that.

"Could definitely build a mini-newspaper/ezine type of thing around this." Maybe, I'll wait to see if the website is of some interest for an interesting number of people first :)

"Don't force me to use my twitter account to do a submission - please!" I thought it was a good idea for moderation/spam protection... Maybe I should rethink that...

"Good job! Keep the iterations coming." Thanks again !

"auto fill with what" >> URL completion

Forcing me to use my twitter account stopped me from going any further. I understand your logic though.

I see someone posted a link to tldr.it - that's kinda what I was thinking as far as showing recent/approved submissions. But you could do better if you do break it down to a tagging/category system. I'm just one voice, so maybe you'll hear it repeatedly.

This is just my input - again, congrats on doing something!

Looks like it could be a good service, like a blog / newspaper version of http://800ceoread.com/.

Posting a list of recently-posted summaries (blog-style) to the front page — especially with an RSS feed — would be a good way to generate traffic / views / traction.

Since there is no moderation for now, I didn't feel like it was a good idea, but thanks for the input, I'll be thinking about it!

Here are the clickable links:

http://www.too-long-didnt-read.com/

Example of TL;DR: http://www.too-long-didnt-read.com/5tropy

I'm sorry to be "that guy" but most of HN readers probably do not suffer from ADHD. There is a big difference between being distracted on the net and real ADHD. So please just call it "internet attention span" or something.

As usual, "that guy" is correct :)

Sorry for the over-simplification. I edited the original post.

http://tldr.it/ does this automatically

I didn't know about it, but it failed formidably on http://tldr.it/summaries/13805

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