But do try …

… How people read online: Why you won’t finish this article. - Slate Magazine. (Hat tip, Julie Chovanes, who notes:

I found the article really poorly written myself...and some of the comments make good points about reasons why, including this:  "I'll bet that a large reason you lost a lot of readers of this article is because of the obnoxious pop-up ad at the start of the article, and the pointless page break halfway through. Those two web authoring trends are a hundred times worse than the short attention span of readers. I'm surprised I made it as far as I did."