Minor Rant: A note on "More"

I can't make you do things or not do them ... you really should defer to your bosses when they tell you to do certain things ... but, when the choice is yours, please ... PLEASE ... avoid the use of the "More" button.

AND, if you HAVE to, make sure you have more than a few paragraphs waiting on the other side.

For the uninitiated, the "More" button appears on a blog entry when you split your entry between the "Entry Body" and "Extended Entry" windows.

Some of our bloggers, and I can think of only one or two, are forced to use it due to technical situations involving other pages (feed issues, etc.), but the "More" button provides little to no value whatsoever, and — particularly if there's only a few sentences or paragraphs waiting on the other side — runs the very real risk of honking readers off, and making us appear to be (please pardon the language) "click whores."

When I first got here, all the blogs used "more" buttons, and I can't think of a single one of those blogs that even LOOKED like a blog to seasoned readers.

Now, they're creeping back in. There's little to almost no benefit to them (I think, over time, they do as much to repress pageview growth as to prop them up), and I also don't buy the "You get more headlines above the scroll" argument, either, since 1.) the headlines are always in the left-rail, above the scroll and 2.) The content should be good enough to draw a reader all the way through, where they'll see the next headline, anyway.

So, to sum up:

1.) Do what your boss tells you, but try not to ever use the "More" button.
2.) If you must, make SURE that what you put behind there is worth the click, because — particularly with our load times — it really will put off some readers if they have to click TWICE to read your five-paragraph entry.

Minor rant over.

Thanks for your indulgence.