How do you feel about conciseness and educational resources? I’m in two minds, on the one hand I am often as someone learning battling jargon defined by jargon – I see a word, I want to know what it means so I can keep reading. I don’t want to read a chain of three wikipedia articles. And that filler and fluff can actually distract and make the lesson or knowledge harder to retain. The reader/student is more likely to misunderstand or to miss core information as they are assaulted by tangents.
On the other hand, I do accept that repetition can improve retention. And I have hedged that this can sometimes be an effective means of getting across ideas. This is different from, say, a meandering or intentionally obscure piece of writing. In that the length comes from repetition, not from “filler” or tangents. And that sometimes not giving away “spoilers” helps a student/reader better understand the information being imparted.
What kinds of writings do you think we should and shouldn’t be tightening up?