Arkitect Design.

50 Reasons Why I Don’t Like List Posts

Now don’t get me wrong, I love lists, but most of the time authors cloak a list as a helpful and informative post, and they hardly ever are. You can look at any ‘big-time design blog’ (Smashing Magazine and any of its off-shoots and clones) and find more lists then you can count and less actually useful information then you’d hope for.

1. A good list should be short and concise. You can go into detail later.
2. If you are ranking or comparing things, show a summary at the bottom.
3. If the title of your ‘article’ contains any of the following words, you’re wasting my time: awesome, rocks, best, great, fresh
4. You aren’t doing anyone a favor if you aren’t providing links.
5. Bring something new to the table. Just a list is not enough.
6. You are not the top most resource on the subject. Don’t act like you are. Your post is an opinion.
7. Don’t post about something that you haven’t actually used or affected you. It’s how you separate garbage from quality.
8. No matter what, it’s been done before.
9. You aren’t an author if you’re just curating.
10. It’s usually way too long. I’ve got time for 10 bullet points at the most.
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