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TL;DR: Any summary text about an article should come at the beginning, not the end.
Why does the TL;DR come last in many blog posts?
All across the web I’ve seen author’s place a “TL;DR” (i.e. a short summary) of an article at the END of the article. This defeats the entire purpose of a TL;DR. What’s going on here?
The purpose of a TL;DR
The purpose of a TL;DR is to save the reader time. Full stop.
If the summary is interesting then the article is likely interesting enough to read in full. If you summary is uninteresting the reader saves themselves minutes of time by not reading it.
TL;DR as ‘In conclusion’
My current theory is that summary text is regarded as equivalent to an “In conclusion” section, which naturally does go at the end of a post.
This certainly makes some sense—The concluding paragraph of an essay will often summarize what was said. However, as I’ve already written, this misses the point of a TL;DR which is to help the reader avoid reading the full text, because it’s too long. It’s in the name.
That is all. Thank you for reading.