Ask HN: Readability loves readers, but at what cost to authors? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Readability loves readers, but at what cost to authors?

10 pointsCalmQuiet6 comments

Readability (http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/) offers a great enhancement to my experience of web-based info. And (even at v. 0.4) to printability of pages (esp. of blogs and blog systems whose print systems are often ugly and wasteful of ink and paper).

However, when I want to print and share with someone else there is the following drawback: the author, original web site, etc. are almost always not printed.

Does this worry you? as authors? as readers?

As it is, I have to hand-write the URL and author on a printed copy.

Maybe this is just an issue for Readability to fix in future versions. But another issue is: do not the designers of blogs and sites need to be more aware of services like Readability and take sensible steps (like including date, author, original url, etc) to be sure ownership is displayed in the body of their articles/posts? I sure would if i were designing blog for myself.

Surely Readability is just the first of what will likely be scraping/reformatting apps, especially when annoying bandwidth-sucking, ink-draining ads dominate so heavily the printed as well as screen versions of sites. Your ideas?

As a "recovering journalist" who constantly recommends Readability to friends, the lack of authorship attribution concerns me greatly.

I don't write Javascript, so I can't provide myself with such a service, but as annoying (heavy bandwidth/printwidth) as many posts are, I think the average web-browsing citizen is soon going to catch on to the joy of reading clean copy.

Here's my vote for Readability (or some other enterprising JS coder) to offer this service along with attribution of authorship and original URL. —just my 2¢

If authors don't want their content to be reformatted they should present it in either a locked down format (ex. PDF) or provide it in a way which is reasonably well formatted.

One of the biggest problems with mobile web browsing is that there are so many fixed format sites which have content for which it is not necessary. I would love if I could just take a badly formatted site, pass it through this on my iPhone and actually have something I can read without scrolling around all over the place.

I agree - at least in regard to material that should be immutable (e.g., approved minutes to a meeting).

But for blog posts... It's not a matter of locking it down ... it's a matter of getting the attribution included.

And for most blog authors... they are not responsible (or capable of taking charge of) the formatting of a page - since they use blogspot, blogger, or other 3rd party systems. So another way to ask the question would be: shouldn't those systems provide better services to their bloggers (or shouldn't bloggers be aware how awful their blogs print from those services) and offer more reader-friendly print css?

I've had some of the same reactions.

Remember that Readability is only at version 0.4 - and i'm not sure that it even has a plan to montetize (sorry, haven't read their site details). Have you considered bringing this suggestion to their attention?

Readability is awesome and I would love to see some version of it for my iphone. I concur that if apps like this become ubiquitous then the 'industry' (whatever that is) will shift toward inline text inclusion of things like credentials as well as advertisement.

Readability is a (somewhat experimental?) service offering from Arc90, which self-describes as:

"Founded in 2004 in Brooklyn, arc90 was created with the goal of designing and building captivating and forward-thinking experiences on the Web. Our strategists partner with you to identify opportunities and help execute on them at all stages including design, architecture and development."

They've got a bunch of interesting projects underway so they may sort of have "a full plate" - but it looks to me like they use Readability as a way to gain visibility and positive press, so hopefully they'll be resourceful enough to take this beyond v .4

Reply on news.ycombinator.com