Is the description that important?

Depends on the question.

I’d love to take your question in another direction and ask about people who go on and on (and on) in the description. Most of us won’t take the time or use the effort to read an entire page of rambling text. Yet, there have been Jellies who can’t understand that brevity yields some helpful and interesting responses, and that “Description” doesn’t mean “In a few thousand words, tell us every detail about your question and why you’ve asked it.”

@SadieMartinPaul When I see a long text like that, written in the same familiar style, I assume it is a bot of some kind and skip it.

Sometimes I use the details section to ask follow-up questions to guide other jellies brains in the direction I want the thread to go in. I like to think it helps in getting more detailed responses if you ask people to dig deeper.

Question titles are supposed to be short. Therefore, details are usually needed for context. Some questions are straightforward enough that they don’t need explaining, and people usually just put something like “as asked” in the description when nothing more is needed. Such questions are rare, however—and rarer than some people seem to think. One thing that is easy to forget is that it’s always much clearer to us what we’re asking than it is to others.

As for overly long details, I again think it depends on the question. Some issues are deep and need qualification. Moreover, concision can be difficult. In the words of Blaise Pascal: “I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.”

That is an area I fail regularly, brevity, everything is connected.

It depends on the question whether more or less detail is needed. Often I find a short story more inclusive.

In other words I agree with @SavoirFaire

@Unbroken But when you write details they are so descriptive and thought provoking I swear I hear music. I don’t know how you do it!

Thanks @LuckyGuy :)

@LuckyGuy Guilty. When I see a long, solid block of text, I move on and read the next question.

@SadieMartinPaul :: I think that has to do with typography here. It is just really hard to read walls of text with so little contrast. And the spacing is all fucked-up too. It kills my eyes and a lot of the time I give up.

Yes, the details are important. The question might be asking what at first glance seems to be obvious or clear, but the details make the question very specific.

I know that a lot of people don’t read the details and their answers seem kind of ridiculous when they don’t understand the qualifiers

Here’s an example (made up to illustrate this situation)

My girlfriend and I have been together for 6 years, we live together and have been having sex since we moved in together, we love each other very much. Should I ask her to marry me?

Details: My girlfriend is the daughter of my wife. I’m her step father. She’s 17 and I plan to divorce her mother and ask my girlfriend to marry me on the day she turns 18

See how the details inside the question, make what seems like an obvious/simple/straightforward question take a completely different turn?

@Kardamom You forgot the part about being age 68. :-)

I’m calling 911! This shit started when she was 11!!