index in essay?

[Petter Sandelin]

Dropped by the other day to read the last two chapters of the new essay, that I hadn't had time to read and found that it's kind of irritating to get to page 4. Links from the content part on the first page to chapters would really help..

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Petter,

The current format for reading and access to the article is all my fault. It does have a reason, which unfortunately puts you at a disadvantage.

What I wanted to avoid is someone coming to the article for the FIRST time simply to click to a given chapter. The essay is a unified whole, and its points must be read and interpreted specifically in light of what has been said previously. Therefore I requested that it be posted and linked to enforce that priority.

I already find it borderline-rude to tell someone, "Go read the essay before I'll discuss XYZ with you." To compound that by checking with everyone that they read the WHOLE thing, and in what order, makes me cringe. The potential misunderstandings someone might bring to the discussion after reading, say, Part 4 in isolation make me shudder; we'd spend WEEKS unravelling that sort of thing.

So I knew, in advance, that some people would in good faith simply not get around to reading the whole horse-choking wad at one time, and that these people would have to click, scroll, click, scroll, click, etc, to get back to where they left off. I knew too that this would be no fun.

However, and with apologies (not sarcastic ones, sincere), I decided that this was an acceptable price to pay in order to avoid the hassles of letting people pick and choose what they were going to read piecemeal.

Best,
Ron