Oh, well, if there's MORE inside I'll read it then.

July 14, 2008 6:11 PM

Why do we need to know there is more inside?

This occured to me over at AskMe, and I find the [more inside] actually does nothing in terms of my MeFi experience. If a question is ill-formed on Ask, I'm not tempted to find out what else lurks behind it, and if there are more details pertinent to the question and the question is well-formed, I'll get those [inside] details when I click on the question anyway.

In short, the tag doesn't affect my reading behaviour at all. I'm just wondering if I'm in the profound minority here, or if most people don't really give [more inside] no nevermind.

I understand that the division of longer posts is useful for both browsing and NSFW link purposes, but does the actual appearance of [more inside] at the end of a line affect anyone's to-click-or-not-to-click decisions?

posted by Shepherd to Etiquette/Policy at 6:11 PM (32 comments total)

I think you're on your own here. But I appreciate your desire to make this a better place.
posted by smackfu at 6:15 PM on July 14, 2008

I was shocked that you has written such a short, undeveloped question! I had no idea what you were going on about! There must have been more to your query. Thank goodness there was a "more inside" tag to let me know you had more to say.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 6:18 PM on July 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

I think you're on your own here. But I appreciate your desire to make this a better place.

I've got nothing against the [more inside] tag, I'm just wondering if other MeFites see it and go "oh boy more inside!" or if most people just kind of ignore it.
posted by Shepherd at 6:25 PM on July 14, 2008

"More inside" piques my interest.
posted by srrh at 6:33 PM on July 14, 2008

Eventually, neither. You just start to see it as part of the design. Keeps things tidy.

"More inside" = "if we let all you wannabe-wordsmiths run your mouths the site would be a goddamn mess."
posted by Ryvar at 6:33 PM on July 14, 2008 [3 favorites]

Yeah, it seems to me that [more inside] is mainly there for the askers, not the answerers. As for how it affects me, I interact with AskMe through the MyAsk rss feed, so it barely affects me at all.
posted by Kattullus at 6:44 PM on July 14, 2008

You made an awfully good case for the [more inside] tag with this post. I wouldn't have bothered to come in if I didn't think you were going to expand on your question.
posted by tkolar at 6:48 PM on July 14, 2008 [2 favorites]

Before the [more inside], some people used to come up with their own (often annoying) ways of indicating [more inside] that distracted from the question.

Also, when I see a poorly formed question that isn't followed by [more inside], I usually don't look inside.

Let me add that I am particularly annoyed by people who use the question title as the first part of their question. Then, I see some random question like, "even when I tried going through the other way" on the front page.

Gee, I'm kind of cranky tonight.
posted by i love cheese at 7:04 PM on July 14, 2008

Seems like I contemplate moronicide every time I read AskMe.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:05 PM on July 14, 2008 [2 favorites]

What tkolar said!
posted by iguanapolitico at 7:06 PM on July 14, 2008

I don't exactly clap my little paws together with glee over it, but yes, I do sometimes click [more inside] because I think that means there is more inside to read. Does that answer your question?
posted by ottereroticist at 7:27 PM on July 14, 2008

I just realized that it says [more inside] and not [more IRONside]. I just assumed there was some crazy Raymond Burr meme that I had missed out on.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 7:29 PM on July 14, 2008

Before the [more inside], some people used to come up with their own (often annoying) ways of indicating [more inside] that distracted from the question.

That is exactly it.

I probably remove one or two "of course there's..." from before the [more inside] on AskMe each week, put there by people who don't quite grok how people see the site in RSS.

I think [more inside] is useful and cuts down scrolling on the main AskMe page and on MeFi it's pretty important for knowing whether there's any more to the post or not.

I also think sometimes people answer or flag AskMe questions skipping the [more inside] sections and you can often tell.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:38 PM on July 14, 2008

It helps unclutter the main page. Imagine most posts as huge blocks of text. It makes for a ponderous FPP page.
posted by Ragma at 7:38 PM on July 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

God, the relationship-filter alone would hurt my scrolling finger.

(And had you tried to post your entire question as one giant blog, you would probably have had lots of people tell you to use the 'More Inside' feature so your text breaks don't mess with the front page layout-ing. Whenever a question or an FPP has text breaks before the jump, it makes me think they are separate threads and messes with my mind. Don't do that.)
posted by Phire at 8:17 PM on July 14, 2008

I understand that the division of longer posts is useful for both browsing and NSFW link purposes, but does the actual appearance of [more inside] at the end of a line affect anyone's to-click-or-not-to-click decisions?

I don't think the "more inside" affects my decision to answer a question, it just acts as a reminder that there is important information that I should read before I attempt to answer the question.
posted by 23skidoo at 9:12 PM on July 14, 2008

I always say "oh boy more inside!" and click through, so as far as I'm concerned it's a winner. In fact, if I were the sort of person who did that sort of thing, I'd simply write "Metafilter: oh boy more inside!" instead of this insightful comment.
posted by nomis at 10:37 PM on July 14, 2008 [3 favorites]

What 23skidoo said.

It's irritating when a question asks, for example, "How can I do Foo?", and the extended section elaborates: "I've already tried X, Y and Z, but none of those things worked." ... and somebody answers, "Try X, Y, or maybe Z."

Without the "more inside", I think we'd see a lot more of that.
posted by taz at 10:47 PM on July 14, 2008

[more inside]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:56 PM on July 14, 2008 [2 favorites]

I'm dying to know the rest of the question that included "even when I tried going through the other way" -- and search turns up nothing! Someone please hope me!
posted by SuperNova at 12:06 AM on July 15, 2008

[more inside] was originally reserved for nougat, caramel and peanuts. It's almost always misused on Metafilter.
posted by klarck at 2:02 AM on July 15, 2008

Originally, Matt introduced the [more inside] link on the anniversary of the martyrdom of St Thomas More, to remind all Mefites of the horrid incarceration of the great thinker in the dank Tower of London for his refusal to abandon the teachings of the Holy Apostolic Church in the face of threats and blandishments from that bestial and lascivious heretic, Henry VIII. Next year we're doing Erasmus for the MeFi European Great Moralists Memorial, I believe.
posted by Abiezer at 2:08 AM on July 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

[more inside] is a great tool for hiding spoilers.
posted by rongorongo at 4:27 AM on July 15, 2008

I just like seeing a bunch of entries on the page at once, which wouldn't happen if there were no [more inside]. Seeing these "annotations" of entries keeps the pages tidy.
posted by Rykey at 5:38 AM on July 15, 2008

[more inside] is where we used to hide the porn in the days when we had the img tag.
posted by chillmost at 6:43 AM on July 15, 2008

Let me add that I am particularly annoyed by people who use the question title as the first part of their question.

I typically flag those as "HTML/display error" if I see them. A mod will often edit the body to include the title.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:43 AM on July 15, 2008

Philosophical side-track: "more inside" is a metaphor. When you click it, your browser loads another page. That page isn't any more "inside" than the front page. But the term seems apt. My question is, does the term seem apt because I already thought of the comments page as inside (and Matt's just making explicit the metaphor in my head), or do I think of the comments page as inside because Matt's wording makes me think of it that way? What if the link said "more on the comments page", "more under the hood" or "more across the river"?
posted by grumblebee at 8:09 AM on July 15, 2008

Or "more after the jump"?

Or "more WHY DID YOU PUNCH MY FACE OW OW ouch" ?
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 3:05 PM on July 15, 2008

Shepherd, meet vronsky.
posted by CunningLinguist at 3:22 PM on July 15, 2008

CunningLinguist, you matchmaker, you.
posted by TwelveTwo at 3:27 PM on July 15, 2008

I've always agreed with you, Shepherd. That makes two of us.
posted by ikkyu2 at 12:08 AM on July 16, 2008

I typically flag those as "HTML/display error" if I see them. A mod will often edit the body to include the title.

Yes. This is a totally helpful and okay thing to do.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:12 PM on July 21, 2008