questions

[lav]

i'm sort of a foreigner to the forum section. i've been on vacation more here just recently, but generally i've had short visits and left for ' long ' periods of time.

there are some looooong threads/posts out there...

how far back on a thread will you read ?

do you have to read every single response to reply to a thread, or are lots of you guys just on here that much that you have already read and keep up on them ?

it's driving me crazy how many answers there are on certain posts.
i'm not sure, but it could be the ocd coming out. i have this terrible compulsion or thought in my head that i have to read every response before i reply and then i see posts that have like 567+ answers and i think yeah, right.

i mean, i may have mentioned in a thread somewhere that i won't waste my time looking back and if it's a new thread i'll probably read from the beginning up to about 20 or 30 some responses. even that seems like a lot now.

now, like today, there's tons of 'em with loads of answers and my ocd is on over-drive. i want to participate, but can't!

i haven't always done this, sometimes i'll just reply.

i know, i'm crazy ( but i was born this way. )





please help.

 

[lav]

obviously i won't read all the way back on the ' streams of consciousness thread, ' hahaha! that would be funny.

 

[hoss2576]

If a thread has gotten extremely long, it most likely isn't still even on topic with what the OP wrote. I wouldn't worry about it. Going back through the last 20 posts on the really longs threads is about the most I will do. The extremely long ones tend to be the fun ones like 5 Questions or the ones with no specific topic like Streams.

 

[zeroturbulence]

I was typing an answer here but there is this helicopter making circles near my house and I can't concentrate because its loud and annoying (even though I love helicopters). I guess its looking for someone. I'll try again later.

 

[cinder]

Also beware the zombie threads. Sometimes people get linked to a really old thread and reply to it, then you have a thread with 50 responses from 2 years ago (or even 6 months is pretty old around here) then it jumps to 1 response from today.

But yeah just the final couple pages of a thread is usually enough to jump in on the discussion.

 

[lav]

thanks so much.

 

[zeroturbulence]

Ok, sorry I took so long to reply.

I tend to skip over long posts because I just don't have the time to read them. The only exception is if I can see from the other posts that there might be something interesting in it.

When I read a thread with a lot of replies I usually just skim through the last page of replies (I speed-read the beginning of each post to see if I might want to read further..) and I of course take note of the ones that are from people I know here, but I hardly ever read an entire post if its more than just a few lines.

One thing I won't read at all are large blocks or walls of text that have no breaks in them (paragraphs).

I once took a business writing class in college and the one thing the professor emphasized was that good writing gets the point across in as few words as possible, and always satisfies the three C's.... Clear, Concise, and Complete.