I wish most of the blog posts I see linked here would condense their message like this, rather than rambling self-indulgently.
And in the process discard you discard the layering of supported ideas. Instead you get a fragment of an idea that you have no idea how it was formulated. Real life isn't like this. You have to sort the noise from the signal. An essay is one way you can do this. If all you want are the short "tell me the answer" type posts you are susceptible to relying on others to think for you and hence be manipulated.
http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/4424779/are-crowds-wise-...
I make it clear what data I'm summarizing, but the summary also seems more timeless to me than the data. I can imagine it being derived from other books about the wisdom of crowds. Like this blog post:
In the processing of writing you are filtering your own ideas into words. This for writers is the main benefit. Through writing you clarify your own ideas. The difference between brevity and verbosity between writers could indicate greater skill in writing converting the ideas into words.
i think his main point was that, despite popular opinion, more people will read the longer articles, and more people will take them seriously and remember them. to quote: In short, I think long blogs have better survival characteristics: greater reach and greater impact.
That kind of style works fine with, say, Violent Acres, because you know what to expect. But Yegge also writes semi technical material with the same style! In this regard, Eliezer Yudkowsky does a good job IMHO: long, but succinct.
After you see that metaphor it just becomes a matter of whether you like poetry or just novels.
Going for a popularist vote rather than forming a cohesive argument.