On sharing links

I work in software engineering. In this field, there is always a lot of industry news to keep up with. It's generally helpful to share what we have learned with colleagues, as it makes it easier for everyone to stay on top of things.

But too often, people share links in Slack without much comment. This has always been frustrating for me. In this age of information overload, sharing a link without so much as a TL;DR isn't helpful to me.

If anything, I know have more information to navigate, not less.

When someone shares a link, I kind of expect them to tell me why it's interesting. 😬 (Also looking at you, friends—dropping random YouTube links in my DMs!)

Honestly, just a one-liner would already take us a long way. It's a shame when people don't include it, especially since they just read the article (or watched the video.)

Now, I understand that people aren’t always going to go this extra mile when sharing memes. But when it comes to work-related matters, I think it’s even more detrimental.

Here’s why you should include TL;DRs when sharing links:

1. Share your reader perspective: let others know why you think this is worth their time
2. Save time for others: help them skim through lengthy content by highlighting the interesting bits

In my previous companies, I tried different approaches to help with this. One was to build a shared reading list in Notion. However, the overhead became painful, and people quit sharing links altogether. So I decided to rethink my approach to solving this problem.

I will now be using Scriv, an app and browser extension (that I’m building myself 🥳). Scriv allows commenting on any web page and bookmarking them. It's like a web clipper but with collaboration features baked in.

I’m excited to hear what you have to say about Scriv!

In the meantime, I'm curious to hear if others have encountered the same issues. How do you solve them?

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