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shokwave comments on I hate TL;DR - Less Wrong
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I actually struggled to understand what you were talking about until I realised you were conflating an author using "tl;dr" in place of "summary" with a commenter dismissing a post with "tl;dr".
Then I realised that it's hardly conflating if they're the exact same, extremely unlikely combination of letters and punctuation! Whence my strange distinction between a self-tl;dr and an other-tl;dr? I assume from the different usages. I feel like an author is allowed to malign their own work in this way - a kind of British understatement of the quality of their work. Commenters don't have that allowance.
Er... just to make sure, you do know that 'TL;DR' is short for 'Too Long; Didn't Read', right? So a commenter dismissing a post presumably did not, in fact, Read, and is glorifying ver own ignorance; but an author using tl;dr obviously did Read, since ve wrote.
I think it's the ridiculous implied sarcasm ("I'm so long-winded even I don't have the patience to listen to myself") that makes it seem 'humble' when self-applied.
Edit: These gender-neutral pronouns are really tripping me up.
I have seen that as "the definition", but most of the times I have seen TL;DR used, the poster did indeed read the piece; so a better definition may be "TOO LONG; DON'T READ", as in "don't waste your time" the post was over-written for what it contains.
Note that I do think using the word "Summary" is better; I posted a rant a few weeks ago against acronyms, especially short ones that you have to stop to think about their meanings.
Well, there's definitely a variety of meanings - without naming names, I recently read an exchange on LW where 'tl;dr' was explicitly used as a synonym for 'summary', divorced from either interpretation of the acronym ("I plan on reading that link later, but for now do you have a tl;dr?").
Edit in response to your edit: Yes, well... I don't have to stop and think about its meaning, is the thing.
But I get your point.
Yes. An author is allowed to dismiss their own post as too long to be worth reading, but a commentor isn't (unless the piece actually is too long to be worth reading).