Hmm, I get your point, but I’m still not sure if I am 100% sold on it.
I guess perhaps it depends on the type of article. Since this is about information rather than about code, I could see how skimming wouldn’t reduce the understanding of information.
But, if this were a blog post on code with example code, skimming it wouldn’t really give you too much benefit. I say this because I am a big skim offender. I’ll often skim posts with code in them, and then go back and realize I just checked that off my list. Read that post, done. But, then I didn’t actually grasp the concept being talked about or learn anything.

I can see the point of skimming with a purpose though, like you said. If you are skimming to determine if you need to read this right now or not, or even at all, then that has a real purpose that has a value. Although, if you have 90 RSS feeds and you skim all of them each day, I would hold pretty strongly to saying that you would learn more by having 10 RSS feeds and reading them fully every day.

I see the irony though. That is pretty funny. Even further ironically, I purposely write my posts so that people can skim them, because I know they will.

Thanks for the input.

here’s why:

skimming past a well structured set of information will give you the highlights of what is being discussed. if you need to know more detail, or want to know more detail about a given section, you stop and you read that section.

when i skimmed passed the major sections of this post, i noted the section headers, the bullet points and the bold sentences. having read those, i determined that it was not necessary for me to read any further detail… until i saw the header “don’t skim” and the points you made within it.

having done exactly what you say not to do, i disagree. by skimming through the points and reading the highlighted content, i was able to judge whether or not the rest of the content was worth reading or not. I was able to get an idea of what you are talking about without having to take the time to fully digest all of the detail and nuance.

i don’t want to know all the detail, honestly, unless that detail is pertinent to what i’m currently doing or will be doing soon. i do want to know the high points and the overall gist of things, though, so that i can come back later and read the detail when i find myself in a situation that needs it.

… that being said, i agree with your point about not just checking things off a list. i don’t skim past stuff to do that, i skim past stuff so i can determine if i need to read it right now or not.

perhaps that section should be titled “skim for the right reasons”

… my $0.000001 worth, anyway 🙂